The Last Interview Read online

  Nevertheless, whenever someone, a colleague, told me he was going to his studio, my heart constricted, as if it had been encircled by a tight elastic band. And involuntarily, the word rolled around in my mouth. The tip of my tongue tapped lightly on the roof of my mouth with the first two syllables and the third spread my lips: stu-di-o.

  More than a year ago, I rented a studio in the moshav Givat Chen. I had no choice. I swear by everything dear to me.

  The building next to ours was being renovated, and the horrendous noise of the drills and hammers kept me from concentrating. Also, my eldest daughter—before she left for boarding school at Sde Boker—didn’t really go to school, and to drown out the racket coming from outside, she played Enrique Iglesias at full volume every morning in her room. Slowly, the walls began to close in on me. A feeling of unease settled in between my stomach and chest and refused to move. I think that was when my dysthymia began, even though I still didn’t know that there was such a thing as dysthymia. So I thought, I need a change of scene, and took my laptop to the office of a psychologist who worked mainly in the evening. I agreed to all the demands she said were preconditions, asking only that, in the contract, we change the definition from “office” to “studio.”

  After moving my laptop to the studio, I added a few books, for atmosphere. I hung a painting I’d received as a gift from a Holocaust survivor, which Dikla said was too sad to hang in the living room, and placed Mayan’s picture on the shelf. Walking distance from the studio was a grocery store that sold fresh, salty bagels. And olives. I like olives when I’m writing. There was an orange tree outside the studio and the landlady said I could pick the fruit. In the studio itself, there was a coffee corner with instant coffee, Turkish coffee, and a fridge with milk in it.

  Everything was ready.

  Givat Chen—so I learned from the sign at the entrance I passed every morning—was named after the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik. No one talks about it, it’s not very nice to tarnish the image of our national poet, but Bialik hardly wrote anything after immigrating to Israel. Apparently, as he once wrote, his little twig had fallen, leaving him without bud or flower, fruit or leaf, and for ten years, he produced only nine poems, which are not among his best. Was the house they built for him in Tel Aviv too beautiful? Too comfortable? Did people’s adoration rob him of the freedom every artist needs? And perhaps all his literary activities, the journals and book publishing, left him no time to stare into space, and without that, without allowing empty space to be empty, how can you replenish yourself? Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe he took on more and more literary activities to avoid being alone with his unable-to-write self? I picture him telling his wife, Manya, before going to sleep that another day had passed without his having produced a poem worthy of the name, and the weary look in her eyes as she listens to him: Really, Chaim Nachman—she thinks but doesn’t say—how long can I listen to the same song?

  He waits, eyes open to the darkness until she falls asleep, and then leaves the house to walk the few blocks to Ira Jan. She’s a passionate woman, an artist who is still impressed by him, and after they have sex, he waits with eyes open to the darkness until Ira Jan falls asleep, then goes to another woman, the third—we can assume he had a third woman—to lay his bald head on her lap so she can stroke it as she sings to him in Yiddish. But all that bed-hopping in Tel Aviv is no help at all, it changes nothing, because the page waiting for him on his desk the next morning is blanker than usual.

  I spent long months in my studio in Givat Chen. I read my students’ texts. I spoke on the phone. I answered e-mails. I went to the grocery store and came back with olives. I picked oranges and squeezed them. I stared at the picture of Mayan, the girl who was killed on Death Road and in whose backpack my book was found. I listened to entire David Bowie albums on YouTube. I read medical articles about dysthymia. I told people, “I’ll call you from the studio.” “Let’s meet at my studio.” I even tried to do yoga on the psychologist’s yoga mat and threw my back out. Maybe it’s the dysthymia that has nailed me so firmly to reality. Maybe other forces have been at work here.

  In the end, I decided to go back home.

  Go back home.

  The tip of my tongue waited patiently to tap lightly on the roof of my mouth as my lips alternately opened and closed around those three words.

  Do you think about your reading public when you write?

  Me? Are you kidding? Absolutely not. It’s irrelevant. And I have no time for it. My mind is so filled with the characters’ vacillations and the plot twists that there’s no room for extraneous thoughts. I categorically deny—

  Only sometimes, like a streaker dashing onto the field in the middle of a soccer game, a powerful sense of anxiety about money bursts into my mind: What if they don’t like it? What if they don’t buy it? How will I make a living? For long moments, that anxiety manages to evade the guards of my self-confidence until they finally catch up to it, grab it a bit too hard by the elbows, and escort it off the field.

  Do you imagine a specific reader when you’re writing?

  For years, I imagined Dikla. I would picture myself reading the manuscript to her in bed. Reading a page and dropping it to the floor. Reading another page and dropping it to the floor. And she would listen and look at me with the same warm, supportive expression tinged with amusement she’d had before we kissed the first time in the apartment on HaRamban Street.

  Recently, it hasn’t been working for me. Imagining Dikla as I write. I think the problem stems from the way she’s been looking at me since Shira left for boarding school. Her expression is no longer warm and supportive, and it’s tinged with criticism.

  Do you remember that I’m flying to Colombia on Sunday? I asked her last week.

  Yes, she said.

  Once, that “yes” held the anticipation of yearning for me. Once her “yes” said: I’ll miss you.

  This time, her “yes” said: It’s actually a good thing you’re going away for a while. To tell the truth, I’ve become tired of you.

  I’m not a child. I know that, ultimately, the energy between two people is destined to change its shape. It’s a law of physics. I’ve seen it happen with other couples, and in fact, I knew that it would happen to us sometime.

  I just never thought it would happen to her first.

  * * *

  —

  A few days later, I sorrowfully packed a bag. Underwear, socks. Copies of my books and students’ manuscripts.

  Usually, I look forward to traveling.

  Usually, when the plane begins to soar, so does my spirit.

  How do you live with the way people interpret and analyze your books?

  I take it in stride. Really. That’s the beauty of literature, with every reading, the book is somehow rewritten, right? And that’s fine with me. Besides, what can I do? Follow everyone who buys my book from the bookstore to his home, then get into bed with him and make sure he understands?

  Simply speaking: Everyone is invited to read my books however they want to.

  Except for a certain academic type.

  Usually from the literature faculty.

  Sometimes you can find them in the cultural criticism or gender studies departments. They’re people who have been indoctrinated by the twisted promotion and tenure mechanisms of the university to focus on a very specific niche. Again and again, they publish articles that examine the same research question. And they compel their students to feed on the same square meter of pasture. They’ve been doing it for so many years that they can read a book only through the narrow prism of their research.

  I was once invited to one of those academics-with-theories conferences.

  I was happy about the invitation, I must admit. Artists need recognition the way scientists need proof. I even snapped a picture of the poster with my name on it at the entrance to the liberal arts building and sent it to my parents, to m
ake them proud.

  But later, at the conference itself, people with advanced degrees took the stage one after the other and imposed overly methodical readings on my book, speaking in authoritative, omniscient tones that made me feel like an ignoramus. I hunched over in the first-row seat that had been reserved for me, and with every knowledgeable sentence spoken on the stage, I withdrew further and further into myself. I put my head in my hands, pressed my elbows against my chest, felt my chest stick to my stomach, until I finally disappeared entirely and the presenter apologized in my name, explaining that personal reasons had kept me from attending the conference.

  Can you make a living as a writer?

  I always fumble for an answer to that question.

  I explain that it’s a small market. Mention that I also run a workshop. Point out that Dikla is the business development manager of a large firm.

  Sometimes I have no choice and I also tell the well-known story of Hershel of Ostropol, whose mother sent him to the grocery store for milk. When he left the store, he was suddenly struck by the fear that the milk was spoiled, so he took a healthy swig before continuing on his way. But then he was struck once again by the fear that the milk had spoiled during his walk. And drank again. Just to make sure. And so he continued walking and stopping to take a drink, until he reached home, and was sent to buy milk again.

  As far as I know, there is no such story about Hershel of Ostropol. It’s a Yiddish tall tale that makes everyone smile in understanding when it’s finished even though the moral of the story is not exactly clear to them.

  That’s how I dance around a simple truth: We’re fine.

  * * *

  —

  When I left the ad agency to focus on writing, I said to Dikla, Listen, we’ll have to cut back.

  She was pregnant with our first child, Shira, not the best time for such a conversation.

  Nonetheless, she immediately said, So we’ll cut back.

  I remember every word of what we said. I remember where we were sitting: in the small kitchen of our rented apartment on Yeldei Teheran Street. On folding chairs.

  I remember what she was wearing: A white maternity top with buttons and a ribbon that tied under her breasts. And black leggings.

  I even remember what was on the plate that sat on the table between us. Sunflower seeds. From the beginning of that pregnancy, she had a powerful craving for sunflower seeds, and the entire house filled up with small mounds of shells.

  Are you sure? I asked.

  I’d like to remind you that you didn’t marry some princess from a mansion in Savyon, she replied, and that has some advantages. Besides, I’m sure your book will sell and everything will work out.

  And if not?

  We’ll manage. Hello, I’m here too, you know. And that’s the dream you’ve been talking about since we met. To write.

  Okay. Should I run down to the kiosk and get you some more seeds?

  Later, she said, and pointed to the bedroom.

  Again? I sighed. As if I didn’t want to.

  It’s not me, she said apologetically. It’s the hormones.

  * * *

  —

  The list of things that attracted me to Dikla is very long. Among them are some small, seemingly unimportant things such as the smell of her shampoo or the fact that she knew by heart the plots of David Bowie music videos from the eighties. There were larger things as well, like the fact that she wasn’t a flirt and didn’t form opinions based on what she read in the weekend papers, and she looked away during extra-violent scenes in TV series.

  But I think that the hidden element, what drew me most profoundly to her, was that she didn’t have a critical bone in her body. She accepted me and believed in me from the first moment. No undermining or attempts to fix me. She showed her love for me exactly the way her father showed his love for her at the family dinners in Ma’alot. With the warmth in his eyes whenever he looked at her. With the softness in his voice when he called her “my little girl.” With the eggplant-and-tahini salad he made especially for her. With the quiet but clear excitement for her every achievement, no matter how small.

  That’s how Dikla loved me then. Without reservation.

  It never occurred to me that, twenty years later, I would call her again and again from Madrid before boarding the connecting flight to Colombia, and she wouldn’t answer.

  How do you deal with criticism?

  My parents are very critical people. Not to your face, of course. But they’re both academics, which means that they painstakingly examine everything taking place in their immediate radius in an effort to prove it fundamentally erroneous. For example, for years they’ve been coming to our place every Monday to babysit their grandchildren. Many things have changed during those years: Every time they arrive, they’re a bit more stooped. And they tend to get emotional much more often. My father has developed a chronic cough and my mother doesn’t hear very well anymore. Shira, the apple of their eye, has gone off to boarding school. And still, after every visit, they give us feedback. My father in a long text that includes clauses and subclauses; my mother in a phone conversation that begins in an empathetic tone and continues with a detailed description of all the mistakes we’re making as parents.

  Take a look at yourself, I want to say. But don’t. Because I don’t want to be disrespectful. Because of the effort they make to come here every Monday.

  In any case, when you grow up in that kind of environment, the need to criticize seeps into you, becomes part of you. It flows in your blood like another sort of cell: white blood cells, red blood cells, critical blood cells.

  All that discouraged me for many years, and even now, sometimes flings me backward and downward (the movement is always backward and downward). But it also immunized me. After all, the harshest criticism is written in my mind even before the book is published. Now too, as I write, I take a potshot at myself: Are you crazy? Answering an Internet interview honestly? Now it’ll be available for years to anyone who googles you.

  Did you ever have writer’s block?

  Are you kidding? I have writer’s block every morning. This whole interview—to confess the truth—is an attempt to deal with writer’s block in a different text.

  What is most challenging about writing?

  The minute I start writing, I have an urge so strong that I can’t ignore it, the urge to eat. I go into the kitchen after every page. No, after every paragraph.

  But that physical hunger is something I can deal with.

  The real problem is a different kind of hunger.

  Your books are very Israeli. Don’t they lose something in translation?

  I wish I knew. The truth is that I have no idea. At a dinner with my publishers in Turkey, for example, they told me that they had to cut several erotic scenes from the book because the Erdoğan regime had recently begun to harass publishers who weren’t careful enough. I sat there as if nothing had happened, nonchalantly ordered sütlaç for dessert, and thought: Who knows how many times this has been done, in other languages, in other countries, without anyone bothering to tell me.

  Generally speaking, there is something fictitious in the whole business of translations. You go to a foreign country. They invite journalists to your hotel. It’s a two-star hotel, so there’s no lobby to speak of, just a small corner with an uncomfortable couch. You sit on that uncomfortable couch for three days. And are interviewed. Some of the journalists represent publications with names like Quinoa Chic, Unshaved Men, or Dogs and Sleds, and they seem a bit too friendly with the publisher’s PR woman. You can also see, or think you see, slight physical similarities between them and her, and you begin to suspect that these interviews have been prearranged: All the PR woman’s relatives have been recruited to give you the feeling that there’s enormous media interest in your book. Even though that week, in the country you’re visiting, a new book by Axel Wolff
was published.

  Your suspicion grows stronger when you suddenly realize—how did you not notice it before?—that even after years of work trips abroad, you have never actually seen someone reading a translated copy of your book. Not in cafés. Not in the subway. Not on trains. For years you walked through train cars, ostensibly to get the kinks out of your lower back but actually in the hope you would see someone, on the left or on the right, with your book. One reader would be enough to restore your confidence in the reality of your existence. But on the right and on the left, in the standard cars, the first-class cars, and the reserved-seat cars, everyone’s reading the new Axel Wolff.

  Conspiracy theories begin to sprout in your mind, maybe some convoluted plot has been hatched behind your back by Udi, your devious agent, the Israeli Foreign Affairs office, and the publisher that’s hosting you. They all know it’s just a facade, they all make an easy profit from the fact that your book has been published but not distributed, and you, the only Truman in The Truman Show, keep traveling abroad, still believing that this time it’s happening, this is your breakthrough.

  The last trip was to Colombia, and something in the combination of the huge quantities of rum, the terminally run-down hotel whose only occupants, apart from you, were Japanese, and the streets full of totally nonliterary beggars blurs the line between reality and simulation. It makes you feel untethered, like an astronaut outside his spaceship, repairing a glitch, whose cable suddenly disconnects.

  After the series of interviews, you spend the free time you have left in Bogotá making the rounds of the bookstores that are open late. Axel Wolff’s new novel in Spanish translation appears in all the windows. You go inside and look for your book on the central display tables. You search the eye-level shelves, then the lower ones. Your book is not on any shelf, not in any store. In one of them, you swallow your embarrassment and go over to the counter to ask. The clerk checks the computer and says they don’t have any in stock. But he can order it for you if you wish. When you go out into the street, you hit the lamppost just to see whether it hurts.