CrocAttack!. Assaf Gavron
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was dying to be declared between us.
I gave her a heavy-lidded look (my crocodilian look) and said: ‘Not right. I am not having you on. I went on a Little No. 5.’
Duchi’s hair is brown and her skin is a colour I used to call caffè latte in the days when we still found the time to lie side by side, stroking each other for hours. The coffee is from her Yemeni grandmother – the one from the night of the incident in ’35. The milk comes from her grandfather and father. When Duchi is on the brink of explosion, the skin on her face grows visibly darker and her luminous eyes cloud over, but it’s not the colour so much as her expression, like a child’s in the second before it cries – only with her it’s not tears but fury.
‘Why the hell didn’t you take a taxi like I asked you to?’
‘Because I had this weird premonition that I wasn’t going to get blown up. And you know something? I wasn’t blown up! And you know something else? I didn’t hear on the news that any other Little No. 5 was blown up today either.’
‘Not the point.’
‘So what is? You wanted me to ride in a taxi for a specific reason. I thought you were wrong. I was proved correct. And now I don’t understand what we’re arguing about.’
‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You really, truly, honestly travelled on a Little No. 5?’
‘Of course! Why take a taxi?’
‘Maybe because I asked? That’s not a reason?’
‘Not if there’s no sense behind it.’
‘I don’t believe this.’
I took a chair from the dining table and sat in front of her. She lowered the volume on the TV, which was on Channel 2: Danny Ronen rambling on and on, his eyebrows conspiring together like a couple of sidekicks pretending to be shrewd.
‘What reason do I have to lie?’
‘I don’t believe this,’ she repeated. ‘Tell me, is there nothing left between us? Not a little appreciation? A little consideration? A little trust?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘What it’s got to do with it?’ She shook her head and covered her face with her hands. She said, ‘I should have listened to Uri a long time ago.’
Oh, here we go: Uri. I was beginning to wonder when his name would crop up. Her therapist. Duchi told me a long time ago that he thought she shouldn’t stay in our relationship, although he would never come out and say it directly. I argued with her then. She quit therapy and we decided to get married. A few weeks after the wedding that never happened, though, she went back to him. And now he’s telling her the same thing once again.
‘Uri doesn’t know anything.’
‘He knows more than you think he does.’
‘How could he know anything on the basis of your stories alone?’
‘But what’s important is the way I see and experience things.’
How many times have we had this conversation?
‘But he’s talking about your relations with me. The experience belongs to both of us, no? How could he say anything truthful about it after hearing only your side? I know how you distort things sometimes. The version he gets depends on the way your mood swings on the day you tell him. And your mood’s about as reliable as Danny fucking Ronen! You…I can’t…How can you believe a single word of it?’
After that neither of us said a word for several minutes. She turned up the volume. Danny Ronen was saying that the security forces had some leads pointing in the direction of Nablus. Terror cells in Nablus had targeted Tel Aviv in the past and they were the only ones with the capability to stage such a destructive attack. That was what a senior military source had told Danny Ronen. The explosive belt used by the suicide bomber, Shafiq somebody from Nablus, weighed 25 kilograms. The IDF was preparing an operation in Nablus in response.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing at the TV. ‘Ten people died.’ ‘Eleven!’ ‘Eleven. And you were on that bus.’ ‘Not a bus.’ ‘I don’t care what it is! It could have been you! So I was worried, OK? I got scared. My whole body was shaking. So I had a simple request to make. You think it was irrational? You think it was stupid? Fine. But I asked you. Your partner asked you to do something which in your opinion is irrational – to travel, for one day of your life, in taxis. So why do you do the opposite on purpose? What is it in me that makes you want to fight? That makes you incapable of respecting me? Do you hate me? This is hatred. I ask for something and you piss on it. What is that if it’s not hatred? So the question is: if you hate me so much what are you doing here at all? Why do you stay?’
Good question. Arguing’s a matter of wanting. You can argue about almost anything and you can not argue about almost anything. In my American family we never rowed at all. With Duchi, it’s the opposite; we have rows all the time. About anything. It’s a permanent row. Perhaps it’s compensation after suffering years of row deprivation with my family. Or merely something in her that gets on my nerves. She complains about my family, I do about hers. She’s stressed, I’m relaxed. She thinks that if there was a terrorist attack on a Little No. 5, there’s going to be another one soon; I disagree. But I don’t enjoy the arguments. I don’t know why they happen. I assume it has to be her. It must be her. She’s a lawyer, after all: their life’s work is arguing. The difference between me and Duchi, in one sentence, is this: I say, things will be all right, and if they aren’t, that’s all right too. Duchi says, things will not be all right, and if they are, that’s not all right either. OK, two sentences.
‘I don’t respect you?’ I said. ‘Sorry, I think you don’t respect me. You don’t respect my reasoning – which has been proved to be correct! – in selecting the particular mode of public transport vehicle in which I travel home.’
‘Don’t shout.’
‘I’m not shouting!’ I mean, it doesn’t bother me at all that there are differences between us. Everybody has differences, every couple; everybody should. What bothers me is the way living together turns nice people into mini-dictators. Criticism of the partner’s conduct becomes the basis of all communication. Improving the partner’s conduct becomes the primary goal. Intimacy is the policing of the other’s conduct.
‘You are! You always end up shouting! You—’
‘Wait, Dooch, wait…shut up! Turn it up! Turn it up!’
On the screen there was a photograph of a familiar face.
‘Giora Guetta, twenty-three, has been identified as the last victim of the Tel Aviv suicide attack. In Guetta’s parents’ house in Hapalmach Street in Jerusalem, there were calls for the government to retaliate with maximum force.’ A man was saying, ‘…They must do something! This government is abandoning our sons. We’re letting them turn our lives into a circus…’
Hapalmach Street in Jerusalem. That was where I needed to go. Duchi looked at me, seeing that my attention was elsewhere now. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I have to go there. To Hapalmach Street in Jerusalem.’
‘You’re not going to any Jerusalem. Are you crazy?’
‘I have to,’ I said. I kissed her forehead; I was already gathering my bag and phone and jacket. ‘I have to go. He talked to me before the…he asked me to deliver a message. I have to.’ I was all ready to go. ‘Don’t worry, Dooch. I’ll be in touch,’ I said, and in my heart I added – maybe.
I was taking the steps two at a time and already a floor down before I heard her voice so I couldn’t hear what Duchi said, only her tone; only her anger and despair echoing down the stairwell behind me.