Chapter 26
The first thing I did when I got home was call my parents.
“What’s this, speaking again?!” my father picked up teasingly.
“The workshop’s finished!” I replied, laughing. “How’s Lily? Can I talk to her?”
From the moment I was drawn back into the spring and then spat back out into the twenty-first century, I missed her terribly.
Even though the plan had been that I would meet my parents in Tel Aviv the following day and collect her from there, I thought of driving to Jerusalem to pick her up that day.
“Hmm, they went out for a walk,” said my father. “We’ll call you when they get back.”
We spoke a little more about how things were with them (“She is such a good, sweet girl, even your mother says so”), how things were with me (“It was an extraordinary experience, and disorienting, but I’m happy to be home”), about some news story of which I had no knowledge, and the weather forecast for the coming days.
I made myself tea and drank it in long, slow sips and walked around the house.
Traces of Jean still lingered, the memory of him thrilled by the accuracy of the family “portraits” (as in the photos of the three of us on the corkboard beside my computer), putting his hand inside the fridge and taking it out, frolicking before me in the shower.
I did not want to think about him so much.
It had been sublime, and now it was time to let go. I got into the shower, and for almost an hour I let the images run through my mind, nonjudgmentally, unafraid, as though I were watching an adventure movie inside my head.
When I finally got out of the shower, I saw a missed call from my mother.
I called her back, still wrapped in a towel, and spoke to her and then Lily.
I was touched by how much my mother was enjoying their time together.
She told me about the walk they took through the Mahane Yehuda market, how the vendors at every stall gave Lily some kind of treat because she charmed everyone, and I surged with maternal pride.
“Mama, Nana Tasha doesn’t like Robinod,” Lily reported to me first. This was her nickname for her grandmother, Natasha, to distinguish from Nana Simone.
“I like Robinod fine!” I heard my mother object in the background. “But not the Disney movie.”
“I’ll meet you in Tel Aviv tomorrow and take you home,” I told her. “I really miss you.”
“What?” said Lily, and I didn’t know if she was talking to me or she was distracted by one of my parents.
“I missed you a lot,” I said again.
“You kissed me a lot??!” Lily asked cheerfully.
“I missed you!” I said loudly and clearly.
“She’s kissing the telephone,” my mother said in the background.
I sent kisses into the receiver, too, and we said goodbye until tomorrow.
After clicking through several Netflix series, none of which aroused particular interest, I decided to take advantage of my last free day.
Instead of indulging in thoughts of Jean and Halimi and of the transient nature of love, I took the printed pages of the French manuscript, determined at least to finish reading the text today.
I made myself an omelet with vegetables, and in the meantime, I thought about what I would make for dinner to celebrate the reunion of my family. I planned to surprise Halimi and meet him at the airport together with Lily.
I went out onto the balcony with a cup of tea and allowed myself a leisurely midday joint. It was very warm, almost too hot, and I thought wistfully of how the fleeting spring would soon be over, and summer, in all of its sweltering intensity, would be upon us.
I went out for a short walk to get some fresh air and move my muscles. I meant to buy flowers and some basic staples to stock the fridge, but my feet took me over the sandstone ridge of their own accord and to the Narrow Passage that the Crusaders called Le Destroit.
But I did not walk to my spring—or puddle. I realized that I did not want to sit and ponder melancholically under the carob tree, deliberating whether or not to jump in. For a while, I stared at what looked to me from afar like flamingoes over the salt pools.
When I got inside, I set the grocery bags down on the table, took a deep breath, and sat on the sofa. For almost an hour, I did nothing. I did not think about anything. I did not even doze off. I just stared at our house and allowed myself to savor the moment.
Then, I tidied the minor mess that had managed to take hold since the cleaner had been here several days earlier.
I wallowed in the sheets, which still bore a trace of Jean’s scent, in a kind of painful pleasure—recalling the only night we spent together.
I thought about Halimi and what it would be like when he got back.
Again, I imagined Nina sneaking into Halimi’s hotel room, arriving unannounced, to supervise the interview and the photo shoot, and the angry sex they might have had.
I relished that this vision didn’t madden or sadden me, not even a little.
I imagined her and Halimi in the throes of wild lovemaking, and it turned me on.
I got myself off with a tremor and fell asleep.
I awoke with a start, but a quick glance at the clock revealed that I had only slept for twenty minutes.
I changed the sheets to Halimi’s favorite set—Egyptian cotton in light blue.
I put the groceries away, placed the flowers in Simone’s blue porcelain vase, and paused once more to muse on the fact that it was just one month earlier that she’d been here and I had gone through my narrow passage for the first time.
It felt like three lifetimes ago. Still smiling, I stepped into the shower.
The reunion had been joyful. Lily was thrilled to see me in Tel Aviv and did not stop talking about the things she did with Nana Tasha. But when we went to get Halimi at the airport and she first spotted him in the arrival hall, she lost it completely.
She ran at him, and he had to artfully maneuver the suitcase and bags he was holding to be able to catch her in his arms. Several people waiting smiled warmly at our little family, and I blinked to drive the sudden tears from my eyes.
Usually when the three of us were all together, Halimi drove, I sat beside him, and Lily dictated the music from the back.
This time, since she was so excited to see him, and he her, I drove, and they sat together in the back.
I listened to their conversations (“Daddy, where were you?”—“In Lisbon and in Paris”—“In Miss Bun?!”) And the serenity of my past two days was replaced with a fierce happiness, which scared me.
I tried to recall the last time that I felt this happy.
I recalled sitting at the window after a wild and satisfying night out, enjoying the mix of warm, homey intimacy and the adventures still in store for me.
And then came the text message from Nina, which muddled everything I had believed about myself.
Calm down, I instructed myself in my most assertive inner voice. Everything is fine now, that’s what’s important. Suddenly, I missed my sister. I tried to clear my head of thoughts and focused on driving.
Back home, Lily thundered to her room and, of her own initiative, began to unpack her things and put them away. I went to put on the kettle, and Halimi lit a cigarette at the balcony threshold. It was dark outside, and the balcony light fell on him like a Hopper painting.
“Come here,” he said, and we embraced for three straight minutes.
Then, he moved away from me and looked me up and down with that old lewd expression of his—my favorite.
“That Vipassana really did you well,” he said with a smile. “You are shining like the sun. Your eyes are green like emeralds.” I laughed and wondered who else could utter the word emeralds so naturally. “How’s the translation coming along?”
“It’s coming along all right,” I answered. His question surprised me. I thought that he would probe further what exactly had gone on at the Vipassana retreat. Several times, I wondered if I would dare try to tell him about my supernatural experiences.
I wanted to tell him about Jean, I really did.
In large part, just to be able to talk to someone about the wonderful, arousing, and liberating feeling of realizing that I was in love with Jean without having stopped intensely loving Halimi.
But he would think that I had completely lost my mind.
Maybe one day I could come up with a story that would put Jean into some more realistic context, I thought.
Maybe then I could talk about it with Halimi.
“Did you really get started on the translation?” he asked, surprising me. He always enjoyed hearing about my translation process but very rarely took an active interest.
“No, I just nearly finished reading the original,” I said and fixed him with a searching look. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” said Halimi and let out a puff of smoke. “By the way, you won’t believe what Jacques found out about Richard.” I hadn’t even asked Halimi how his brother was doing. I perked up.
“Yes?” I was ready for any kind of juicy gossip—Richard was a bigamist, or president of the International Monetary Fund, or was once a woman. But Halimi surprised me yet again.
“So, it turns out that this property has been passed down in Richard’s family, from generation to generation, for hundreds of years now,” he said, enjoying my interest. He tossed the cigarette butt into the empty ashtray on the balcony table and went inside.
“How many hundreds of years?” I asked, trembling. I sat down on the couch beside him. From Lily’s room, I heard the sounds of a person making a mess while tidying up.