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Fiction

Velocity

By Ofir Touche Gafla
Translated from Hebrew by Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann
Ofir Touché Gafla counts down the hours in a runaway city.

I met her on the day that I divorced the sow. She came up to me and asked if I wanted a hug. She was wearing a black T-shirt with the words “International Hug Day” emblazoned on it. Behind her trailed a flock of smiling huggers. On any other day I would have yelled at them to go get a real job, since I knew they were the type who turn the celebration of “international days”—days like “No-Smoking Day,” “Family Day,” “Accident-Free Day”—into a vocation, 365 days a year, but on that particular day, I really did need a hug. A whole chapter of my life had just come to an end, and I had no idea where I was headed. I knew that a hug wouldn’t solve anything, and yet I chose to remain there on that bustling sidewalk, not far from the old Town Hall. I didn’t let anyone hug me, except for her. She hugged me for a long moment and when we separated, she smiled at me almost as if she really meant it. I smiled back at her and continued on my way, stopping to ask a young guy in a hugger shirt how long they would be there, and he grinned, excruciatingly pleased with himself, and declared, “Until the last person . . .” His outstretched arms beckoned, but I murmured, “I’m good,” and proceeded to the café at the bend in the road. An hour later, I returned to the scene, straight into the arms of my favorite hugger. She didn’t remember me. Until the third time, when she scrutinized me with a smile, but didn’t utter a word. From then on, every hour on the hour, I “bumped” into her and demanded the hug that would help me to forget my porcine ex-wife. For her part, she saw nothing strange in my behavior, and just before midnight she whispered in my ear, “See you.” Two days later, I saw her on the opposite side of the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. I think I recognized her by the way her shoulders moved backward slightly with every step she took, as if she were hostage to the wind that blew against her, impeding her progress. She walked with her head down and as I approached her, right in the center of the crosswalk, I wondered how she would react if she saw me. Unfortunately she was deep in thought, and I felt I had no choice but to do the undoable. I spread my arms wide and enfolded her in a brave hug. She lifted her head in alarm, surveyed my face in horror, and shouted, “Are you nuts?” An hour later we were sharing a cigarette, lying on our backs and staring at my damp-stained bedroom ceiling. “I love this city,” she said all of a sudden. “Why?” I asked, and she giggled and wiped away a tear that was trickling from the corner of her eye. “Everything happens so fast here. But not too fast. This city… shortens processes. And maybe processes are meant to be short in the first place. I don’t know. The city I come from is different. There, everything takes time. Too much time. And don’t think it’s because everyone there is so deep. It’s just the way they are. They don’t understand that’s it’s all a waste of time.” “So what are you actually saying?” I asked, slightly anxious. She caressed the stubble on my chin. “I don’t know. I have this dream that the other cities will catch up with this city. Imagine. If we had met in my hometown, we’d be sitting in a café now, talking and talking and talking, and afterward we’d go home, totally frustrated. I bet months would pass before . . .” “So what now?” I asked, the worry creeping into my voice again. “Now?” She chuckled and touched her lips to my forehead. “Now I love you.” A year later, experts from New York were invited to our city to measure its pace, and announced, to the delight of the locals, that it had doubled its speed in the previous year. This was manifested not only in interpersonal interactions, but even in the length of time it took to complete roadwork or in the output of those among us whose job it was to make things happen (they were few, relative to the general population—the talkers talked double and the doers overdid). The results were no surprise to me, or to my new wife. Just before the end of her ninth month of pregnancy, she had conceived again, carrying in her womb our second, as-yet-undeveloped child. When she gave birth to our firstborn, the midwives laughed and said that the baby’s little brother was already itching to emerge, but for the time being he’d have to wait patiently. When we went out walking through the streets of our city, gently pushing the stroller bought for our darling daughter, who had learned to walk at six months, two months after the birth of her brother, and had learned to read and write within a year, so that she could read bedtime stories to him, we marveled at the transformations our beloved metropolis was undergoing on a daily basis. My wife said that pretty soon we wouldn’t recognize our own city, and I said she was exaggerating. Two months later, when I wanted to celebrate her twenty-sixth birthday, my wife was dead set against it, using as her excuse a midlife crisis, and screaming from the bathroom that she had just discovered her first white hair. I tried to soothe her, and suggested that we have a picnic in the municipal park, where we liked to take the kids to play, before they started to rebel against us (the little one, at six, was addicted to post-punk music and had announced that from now on he was only going to smoke dope). On the verge of refusing, she surprised me by accepting my offer. But when we arrived at the park, we were confronted by an unexpected obstacle. Instead of the familiar trees and grass, the Levantine Mall skyscraper greeted us there, forcing us to seek a better place to unwind, and we were compelled to set off for our favorite cinema in the heart of the city. The film, a family saga of vast proportions, lasted seventeen minutes, and we rounded off our outing with a visit to the synopsis shop. I bought her a set of the collected works of Dostoevsky and with the money left over I purchased some sugar-coated condoms for the kids. A week later, my wife complained to me that on the third page of Crime and Punishment, where Raskolnikov is done with tormenting himself and murders the old landlady, a paragraph was missing. I went to replace her copy, but to my dismay the store had given over to one of those tiresomely familiar institutes, this one dedicated to progressive spirituality, of the type that implores hard-core criminals specifically, and ordinary citizens with criminal tendencies in general, to save themselves time and trouble and see the light before doing time and discovering God in prison. I left the place in anger, hailed a cab, gave the driver my address and told him to take me home. He answered that the street I had asked for didn’t exist anymore. “Those people… with the old-fashioned names . . . who has the energy for them?” he sneered, adding that he was pretty sure that yesterday’s Hasmonean Street was today’s Britney Boulevard. “And that won’t last too long either.” He was right. In the accelerated city, where street names changed at the whim of clerks who were pop music fans, I couldn’t find my apartment. I had thought that I could trust my own eyes, but familiar details seemed foreign, and every beloved reference point was wiped from my field of vision and banished to the dungeon of memory. I told myself that if I wandered the streets for long enough I would find my missing home, but once again I was proven wrong. I saw hundreds of people like me, and on the following day, thousands. They were lost, confused, unable to fathom what had happened to the city’s speedometer. On my first homeless night I still hadn’t accepted my fate and I grew hoarse shouting out the names of my wife and children. The next night I sat under an abandoned tree near the Postal Museum on Beyoncé Street, formerly Zamenhoff, sobbing bitterly. When I awoke, drenched in sweat, I raised my head and saw the tree was gone. And gone with it, I was shocked to realize, were the names of my nearest and dearest. I could hardly believe it, although I was familiar with the terrifying phenomenon. In the breakneck city people experience life at top speed, and what used to be the core of your existence just a year ago, in what seems like the blink of an eye, becomes something so insignificant as to hardly be worthy of your attention, whether you like it or not. But I did not like it. I wanted to be in the bosom of my disappearing family that had been wrenched from me against my will. I wanted the woman who demanded that we eat supper while she was cooking it, to save time. I wanted the daughter who quit doing drugs cold turkey, at age ten. I wanted the son who came out of the closet just to see what it felt like. And more than anything, I wanted to know that the three of them were searching for me in the accursed city. For seven days I wandered like a tourist through the streets of the metropolis that were ceaselessly shifting, where I was witness to acts of hideous violence perpetrated by homeless people like myself attempting to evict tenants from their transient homes. I considered abandoning the city, simply crossing over into the neighboring one, whose rhythm was a source of derision in our district, but I feared that my loved ones would never find me, and, frankly, I had no idea at all where my city ended and the next one began. There were moments when I took comfort in the thought that the unbearable sorrow couldn’t last long, because in this city it couldn’t be any other way. But another week passed, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about them. Once I stole a drawing pad from a shop that had reinvented itself as a Japanese restaurant, and a pen from a wandering waitress, thinking I could console myself with drawings of the faces of my dear ones. I sat facing Murder Square, gazing at the hundreds of other lost souls, my hand hovering in circles above the blank page, as a new horror pulsed within me. No. No matter how hard I tried, I could not visualize the faces of my wife and children. The city of fluctuating features had wiped their features from my memory. But the lacerating pain endured. I remembered that I had forgotten, and I no longer cried. The speeding city killed them, eliminated them in one fell swoop. I could walk right past them, and never know it. Unable to recognize them I might even wish them ill, if circumstances so conspired. Every face I passed reminded me of a thousand others, absorbed in the madding crowd. Exhausted, alien, and apathetic. That’s how I saw myself reflected in the plate glass window of a clothing store. That’s also how I saw him. Perhaps a month had passed since my errand to exchange the synopsis, perhaps two months, or maybe two days, in the manic metropolis. On my way back from dinner with two complete strangers who had mistaken me for a brother who was killed in a war, I was in search of a pleasant place to spend the night. Two old ladies were playing hopscotch on the faces of dictators and invited me to join the game. I shook my head “no” and continued on my way. Several ten-year-old children pursued a seven-year-old boy screaming “Pedophile! Stinking pedophile!” A woman in a veil clutched a sign that read I HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROTEST EVEN IN A PERFECT WORLD. A young man walked, head inclined, like a woman from a prehistoric age, in a random crosswalk, and when my shadow fell upon him he raised his head, fixing me with empty eyes. I didn’t know what was happening. Something stirred in me and suddenly I burst out laughing. I couldn’t restrain my erupting laughter, and certainly not the tremendous joy that flooded me without warning. The man wrinkled his brow and before I knew what I was doing I heard myself asking “How long will you be here?” He answered automatically, “Until the last person . . .” “So may I?” I asked hesitantly. “Of course,” He approached me. We embraced. Like brothers. Like friends. Like lovers. And at that very moment, we knew we weren’t mistaken. He was one of the huggers. I was the stubborn one. Velocity had brought us together again. From that moment we were never apart. We told ourselves and each other that we had found what we were looking for, although we didn’t really enjoy making love and used our crocodile tears as a lubricant. We were a couple, in a city of singles, and from time to time, when we became aware of the envious glances of the others, trapped in their seclusion, we promised them that anything is possible, murmuring “redemption” and stifling obnoxious laughter. In time, we even created a piece of street theater to entertain passersby that was three minutes long, in the course of which we met, groped, fell in love, argued, grew to hate one another, parted, murdered, rose from the dead, and evolved once again into a pair of actors. The crowds loved us, less for the quality of our performance than for our willingness to give of ourselves. Unfortunately, within just a few days we tired of our act, but we did our best to pretend, for the sake of our public. We did everything in our power to hide the intense dislike that we had developed for each other and swore that we would not let the city beat us down. Of course we had known from the start that it would do its best to come between us, as it had with everything else. Following an unknown period of time, old age crept upon us. Sorry. It didn’t creep. It pounced. And not just on us. The cracks appeared all over the city, its buildings covered in wrinkles, its streets creased in a patchwork of fissures, while the stench of incontinence hung in the air. In more optimistic moments we searched for beauty in the ancient visage that the passage of time had etched on the hundred-year-old municipality, laughing that it appeared to be at least a thousand years old. Most of the time we longed to disappear. We stopped performing our act, and vowed to stay together, supporting each other through secret alleyways, seeking refuge from ghastly bearded babies who leered at us from rusty carriages pushed to and fro by pairs of hands with protruding veins belonging to varicose-faced parents. We pitied the infants whose lives were over before they even began, and gave up all hope. On the final day that the city granted its residents, we hurtled forward toward the end, like everyone else. It was an onslaught like nothing we had ever seen before; from every nook and cranny the aging masses poured forth, and we two strode among them, the hugger and me, arm in arm with wide grimaces stretching our lips. For hours we walked together, intent on the sounds of the city as it disintegrated around us, occasionally shielding our heads from sudden plaster showers. We had no idea how long the journey to the dead end would continue, when one of the children, at the head of the procession, pulled out his dentures with a flourish and cried, “We’re here!” The hugger cast me a worried glance from the corner of his eye and I grinned for him. The cemetery stood silent before us, and each of us in turn lay down on the ground, closed our eyes and waited.

© Ofir Touche Gafla. By arrangement with the author. Translation ©2012 by Gilah Kahn-Hoffman. All rights reserved.

English Hebrew (Original)

I met her on the day that I divorced the sow. She came up to me and asked if I wanted a hug. She was wearing a black T-shirt with the words “International Hug Day” emblazoned on it. Behind her trailed a flock of smiling huggers. On any other day I would have yelled at them to go get a real job, since I knew they were the type who turn the celebration of “international days”—days like “No-Smoking Day,” “Family Day,” “Accident-Free Day”—into a vocation, 365 days a year, but on that particular day, I really did need a hug. A whole chapter of my life had just come to an end, and I had no idea where I was headed. I knew that a hug wouldn’t solve anything, and yet I chose to remain there on that bustling sidewalk, not far from the old Town Hall. I didn’t let anyone hug me, except for her. She hugged me for a long moment and when we separated, she smiled at me almost as if she really meant it. I smiled back at her and continued on my way, stopping to ask a young guy in a hugger shirt how long they would be there, and he grinned, excruciatingly pleased with himself, and declared, “Until the last person . . .” His outstretched arms beckoned, but I murmured, “I’m good,” and proceeded to the café at the bend in the road. An hour later, I returned to the scene, straight into the arms of my favorite hugger. She didn’t remember me. Until the third time, when she scrutinized me with a smile, but didn’t utter a word. From then on, every hour on the hour, I “bumped” into her and demanded the hug that would help me to forget my porcine ex-wife. For her part, she saw nothing strange in my behavior, and just before midnight she whispered in my ear, “See you.” Two days later, I saw her on the opposite side of the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. I think I recognized her by the way her shoulders moved backward slightly with every step she took, as if she were hostage to the wind that blew against her, impeding her progress. She walked with her head down and as I approached her, right in the center of the crosswalk, I wondered how she would react if she saw me. Unfortunately she was deep in thought, and I felt I had no choice but to do the undoable. I spread my arms wide and enfolded her in a brave hug. She lifted her head in alarm, surveyed my face in horror, and shouted, “Are you nuts?” An hour later we were sharing a cigarette, lying on our backs and staring at my damp-stained bedroom ceiling. “I love this city,” she said all of a sudden. “Why?” I asked, and she giggled and wiped away a tear that was trickling from the corner of her eye. “Everything happens so fast here. But not too fast. This city… shortens processes. And maybe processes are meant to be short in the first place. I don’t know. The city I come from is different. There, everything takes time. Too much time. And don’t think it’s because everyone there is so deep. It’s just the way they are. They don’t understand that’s it’s all a waste of time.” “So what are you actually saying?” I asked, slightly anxious. She caressed the stubble on my chin. “I don’t know. I have this dream that the other cities will catch up with this city. Imagine. If we had met in my hometown, we’d be sitting in a café now, talking and talking and talking, and afterward we’d go home, totally frustrated. I bet months would pass before . . .” “So what now?” I asked, the worry creeping into my voice again. “Now?” She chuckled and touched her lips to my forehead. “Now I love you.” A year later, experts from New York were invited to our city to measure its pace, and announced, to the delight of the locals, that it had doubled its speed in the previous year. This was manifested not only in interpersonal interactions, but even in the length of time it took to complete roadwork or in the output of those among us whose job it was to make things happen (they were few, relative to the general population—the talkers talked double and the doers overdid). The results were no surprise to me, or to my new wife. Just before the end of her ninth month of pregnancy, she had conceived again, carrying in her womb our second, as-yet-undeveloped child. When she gave birth to our firstborn, the midwives laughed and said that the baby’s little brother was already itching to emerge, but for the time being he’d have to wait patiently. When we went out walking through the streets of our city, gently pushing the stroller bought for our darling daughter, who had learned to walk at six months, two months after the birth of her brother, and had learned to read and write within a year, so that she could read bedtime stories to him, we marveled at the transformations our beloved metropolis was undergoing on a daily basis. My wife said that pretty soon we wouldn’t recognize our own city, and I said she was exaggerating. Two months later, when I wanted to celebrate her twenty-sixth birthday, my wife was dead set against it, using as her excuse a midlife crisis, and screaming from the bathroom that she had just discovered her first white hair. I tried to soothe her, and suggested that we have a picnic in the municipal park, where we liked to take the kids to play, before they started to rebel against us (the little one, at six, was addicted to post-punk music and had announced that from now on he was only going to smoke dope). On the verge of refusing, she surprised me by accepting my offer. But when we arrived at the park, we were confronted by an unexpected obstacle. Instead of the familiar trees and grass, the Levantine Mall skyscraper greeted us there, forcing us to seek a better place to unwind, and we were compelled to set off for our favorite cinema in the heart of the city. The film, a family saga of vast proportions, lasted seventeen minutes, and we rounded off our outing with a visit to the synopsis shop. I bought her a set of the collected works of Dostoevsky and with the money left over I purchased some sugar-coated condoms for the kids. A week later, my wife complained to me that on the third page of Crime and Punishment, where Raskolnikov is done with tormenting himself and murders the old landlady, a paragraph was missing. I went to replace her copy, but to my dismay the store had given over to one of those tiresomely familiar institutes, this one dedicated to progressive spirituality, of the type that implores hard-core criminals specifically, and ordinary citizens with criminal tendencies in general, to save themselves time and trouble and see the light before doing time and discovering God in prison. I left the place in anger, hailed a cab, gave the driver my address and told him to take me home. He answered that the street I had asked for didn’t exist anymore. “Those people… with the old-fashioned names . . . who has the energy for them?” he sneered, adding that he was pretty sure that yesterday’s Hasmonean Street was today’s Britney Boulevard. “And that won’t last too long either.” He was right. In the accelerated city, where street names changed at the whim of clerks who were pop music fans, I couldn’t find my apartment. I had thought that I could trust my own eyes, but familiar details seemed foreign, and every beloved reference point was wiped from my field of vision and banished to the dungeon of memory. I told myself that if I wandered the streets for long enough I would find my missing home, but once again I was proven wrong. I saw hundreds of people like me, and on the following day, thousands. They were lost, confused, unable to fathom what had happened to the city’s speedometer. On my first homeless night I still hadn’t accepted my fate and I grew hoarse shouting out the names of my wife and children. The next night I sat under an abandoned tree near the Postal Museum on Beyoncé Street, formerly Zamenhoff, sobbing bitterly. When I awoke, drenched in sweat, I raised my head and saw the tree was gone. And gone with it, I was shocked to realize, were the names of my nearest and dearest. I could hardly believe it, although I was familiar with the terrifying phenomenon. In the breakneck city people experience life at top speed, and what used to be the core of your existence just a year ago, in what seems like the blink of an eye, becomes something so insignificant as to hardly be worthy of your attention, whether you like it or not. But I did not like it. I wanted to be in the bosom of my disappearing family that had been wrenched from me against my will. I wanted the woman who demanded that we eat supper while she was cooking it, to save time. I wanted the daughter who quit doing drugs cold turkey, at age ten. I wanted the son who came out of the closet just to see what it felt like. And more than anything, I wanted to know that the three of them were searching for me in the accursed city. For seven days I wandered like a tourist through the streets of the metropolis that were ceaselessly shifting, where I was witness to acts of hideous violence perpetrated by homeless people like myself attempting to evict tenants from their transient homes. I considered abandoning the city, simply crossing over into the neighboring one, whose rhythm was a source of derision in our district, but I feared that my loved ones would never find me, and, frankly, I had no idea at all where my city ended and the next one began. There were moments when I took comfort in the thought that the unbearable sorrow couldn’t last long, because in this city it couldn’t be any other way. But another week passed, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about them. Once I stole a drawing pad from a shop that had reinvented itself as a Japanese restaurant, and a pen from a wandering waitress, thinking I could console myself with drawings of the faces of my dear ones. I sat facing Murder Square, gazing at the hundreds of other lost souls, my hand hovering in circles above the blank page, as a new horror pulsed within me. No. No matter how hard I tried, I could not visualize the faces of my wife and children. The city of fluctuating features had wiped their features from my memory. But the lacerating pain endured. I remembered that I had forgotten, and I no longer cried. The speeding city killed them, eliminated them in one fell swoop. I could walk right past them, and never know it. Unable to recognize them I might even wish them ill, if circumstances so conspired. Every face I passed reminded me of a thousand others, absorbed in the madding crowd. Exhausted, alien, and apathetic. That’s how I saw myself reflected in the plate glass window of a clothing store. That’s also how I saw him. Perhaps a month had passed since my errand to exchange the synopsis, perhaps two months, or maybe two days, in the manic metropolis. On my way back from dinner with two complete strangers who had mistaken me for a brother who was killed in a war, I was in search of a pleasant place to spend the night. Two old ladies were playing hopscotch on the faces of dictators and invited me to join the game. I shook my head “no” and continued on my way. Several ten-year-old children pursued a seven-year-old boy screaming “Pedophile! Stinking pedophile!” A woman in a veil clutched a sign that read I HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROTEST EVEN IN A PERFECT WORLD. A young man walked, head inclined, like a woman from a prehistoric age, in a random crosswalk, and when my shadow fell upon him he raised his head, fixing me with empty eyes. I didn’t know what was happening. Something stirred in me and suddenly I burst out laughing. I couldn’t restrain my erupting laughter, and certainly not the tremendous joy that flooded me without warning. The man wrinkled his brow and before I knew what I was doing I heard myself asking “How long will you be here?” He answered automatically, “Until the last person . . .” “So may I?” I asked hesitantly. “Of course,” He approached me. We embraced. Like brothers. Like friends. Like lovers. And at that very moment, we knew we weren’t mistaken. He was one of the huggers. I was the stubborn one. Velocity had brought us together again. From that moment we were never apart. We told ourselves and each other that we had found what we were looking for, although we didn’t really enjoy making love and used our crocodile tears as a lubricant. We were a couple, in a city of singles, and from time to time, when we became aware of the envious glances of the others, trapped in their seclusion, we promised them that anything is possible, murmuring “redemption” and stifling obnoxious laughter. In time, we even created a piece of street theater to entertain passersby that was three minutes long, in the course of which we met, groped, fell in love, argued, grew to hate one another, parted, murdered, rose from the dead, and evolved once again into a pair of actors. The crowds loved us, less for the quality of our performance than for our willingness to give of ourselves. Unfortunately, within just a few days we tired of our act, but we did our best to pretend, for the sake of our public. We did everything in our power to hide the intense dislike that we had developed for each other and swore that we would not let the city beat us down. Of course we had known from the start that it would do its best to come between us, as it had with everything else. Following an unknown period of time, old age crept upon us. Sorry. It didn’t creep. It pounced. And not just on us. The cracks appeared all over the city, its buildings covered in wrinkles, its streets creased in a patchwork of fissures, while the stench of incontinence hung in the air. In more optimistic moments we searched for beauty in the ancient visage that the passage of time had etched on the hundred-year-old municipality, laughing that it appeared to be at least a thousand years old. Most of the time we longed to disappear. We stopped performing our act, and vowed to stay together, supporting each other through secret alleyways, seeking refuge from ghastly bearded babies who leered at us from rusty carriages pushed to and fro by pairs of hands with protruding veins belonging to varicose-faced parents. We pitied the infants whose lives were over before they even began, and gave up all hope. On the final day that the city granted its residents, we hurtled forward toward the end, like everyone else. It was an onslaught like nothing we had ever seen before; from every nook and cranny the aging masses poured forth, and we two strode among them, the hugger and me, arm in arm with wide grimaces stretching our lips. For hours we walked together, intent on the sounds of the city as it disintegrated around us, occasionally shielding our heads from sudden plaster showers. We had no idea how long the journey to the dead end would continue, when one of the children, at the head of the procession, pulled out his dentures with a flourish and cried, “We’re here!” The hugger cast me a worried glance from the corner of his eye and I grinned for him. The cemetery stood silent before us, and each of us in turn lay down on the ground, closed our eyes and waited.

‘מעהת

הכרתי אותה ביום שהתגרשתי מהחזירה. היא ניגשה אליי ושאלה אותי אם אני רוצה חיבוק. היא לבשה חולצה כחולה ועליה הכיתוב ‘יום החיבוק הבינלאומי’. מאחוריה השתרכה עדת מחבקים חייכנית. ביום אחר הייתי צועק עליהם שיילכו לחפש עבודה אמיתית, כי ידעתי שמדובר באנשים שמשתכרים למחייתם מפרסום ימים בינלאומיים, דוגמת ‘יום ללא עישון’, ‘יום המשפחה’, ‘יום ללא תאונות דרכים’, 365 ימים בשנה, אך באותו היום הייתי באמת זקוק לחיבוק. פרק שלם בחיי הגיע לסיומו, ולא היה לי מושג לאן מועדות פניי. ידעתי שחיבוק לא יפתור דבר, ובכל זאת בחרתי להתעכב על המדרכה שוקקת החיים, לא רחוק מבניין העירייה הישן. לא הרשיתי לאף אחד, מלבדה, לחבק אותי. היא חיבקה אותי דקה ארוכה, וכשנפרדנו, חייכה אליי כמעט כאילו התכוונה לכך. חייכתי אליה בחזרה והמשכתי בדרכי. שאלתי בחור צעיר בחולצת מחבקים עד מתי הם נמצאים שם, והוא חייך, מוקסם כליל מעצמו, ‘עד הבן אדם האחרון…’. הוא פרש את זרועותיו לצדדים, ואני מלמלתי, ‘זה בסדר’, והמשכתי בדרכי אל בית הקפה בעיקול הרחוב. כעבור שעה, שבתי אל זירת ההתרחשות, היישר אל זרועותיה של המחבקת החביבה עליי. היא לא זכרה אותי. עד לפעם השלישית. אז בחנה אותי בחיוך ולא אמרה מילה. מאז, בכל שעה עגולה, ‘נקריתי בדרכה’ ותבעתי את החיבוק שיעזור לי לשכוח את גרושתי החזירה. היא, מצידה, לא מצאה טעם לפגם בהתנהגותי המוזרה, וקצת לפני שעת חצות, לחשה באוזני, ‘להתראות’.

כעבור יומיים, ראיתי אותה מעברו האחר של מעבר החציה, ממתינה להתחלפות הרמזור. אני חושב שזיהיתי אותה הודות לתנועת כתפיה, שנעו קמעא לאחור עם כל צעד, כמו נפלה קורבן לרוח המניאה אותה מהתקדמות. היא צעדה בראש מושפל, וכשקרבתי אליה, בנקודת האמצע של מעבר החצייה, תהיתי כיצד תגיב אם תראה אותי. לצערי היתה שקועה בהרהוריה, ובלית ברירה עשיתי את הבל ייעשה. פרשתי זרועותיי לקראתה וכרכתי אותן סביבה בחיבוק אמיץ. היא הרימה את ראשה בבהלה, נרתעה לאחור, סקרה את פניי בזעזוע וצעקה עליי, ‘תגיד, אתה נורמלי?!’ כעבור שעה חלקנו סיגריה, שרועים על גבינו ובוהים בכתמי הרטיבות על התיקרה בחדר השינה שלי. ‘אני אוהבת את העיר הזאת’, היא אמרה לפתע. ‘למה?’, שאלתי, והיא צחקקה ומחתה דמעה שהחלה לגלוש מזווית העין. ‘הכל קורה פה מהר. אבל לא מהר מדי. העיר הזאת…מקצרת תהליכים. ואולי בכלל תהליכים אמורים להיות קצרים מלכתחילה. אני יודעת. העיר שממנה באתי שונה. שם הכל לוקח זמן. יותר מדי זמן. ושלא תחשוב שזה בגלל שכולם כאלה אנשים עמוקים. הם פשוט רגילים ככה. הם לא מבינים שזה סתם בזבוז זמן’. ‘אז מה את בעצם אומרת?’, שאלתי בדאגה קלה. היא ליטפה את זיפי סנטרי. ‘לא יודעת. יש לי חלום שגם הערים האחרות יצליחו להדביק את הקצב של העיר הזאת. תחשוב שאם היינו מכירים בעיר הולדתי, היינו עכשיו יושבים בבית קפה ומדברים ומדברים ומדברים, ואחר כך היינו חוזרים הביתה מתוסכלים לגמרי. בטח היו עוברים חודשים עד ש…’. ‘ומה עכשיו?’, שוב התגנבה הדאגה לקולי. ‘עכשיו?’, היא גיחכה והצמידה את שפתיה אל מצחי. ‘עכשיו אני אוהבת אותך’.

 

כעבור שנה, הוזמנו מומחים מניו יורק לעירנו כדי למדוד את מהירותה, והכריזו, לשמחת התושבים, שהעיר הכפילה את מהירותה בשנה החולפת. הדבר בא לידי ביטוי לא רק באינטרקציות הבינאישיות אלא אף בזמן שארכו העבודות בכבישים או בתפוקת היצרנים שבקרבנו (שהיו מעטים יחסית לאוכלוסיה הכללית- אלה שדיברו דיברו שבעתיים, ואלה שעשו עשו כפליים). תוצאות המדידה לא הפתיעו את אשתי הטריה ואותי. קצת לפני סוף החודש התשיעי להריונה, התעברה שנית, והכילה ברחמה את ילדנו השני, הבלתי מפותח. כשילדה את בתנו הבכורה, צחקו האחיות המיילדות ואמרו שהאח הקטן משתוקק לצאת לאוויר העולם, אך לעת עתה ייאלץ להתאזר בסבלנות. כשיצאנו לשוטט ברחובות העיר, דוחפים בעדינות את עגלת בתנו שהחלה ללכת בגיל חצי שנה, חודשיים לאחר לידת אחיה, ולמדה קרוא וכתוב כעבור שנה, כדי שתוכל להקריא לו סיפורים לפני השינה, התפעלנו מהשינויים שחלו בפני עירנו האהובה חליפות לבקרים. אשתי אמרה שבקרוב כבר לא נוכל לזהות את העיר, ואני אמרתי לה שהיא מגזימה. מקץ חודשיים, כשביקשתי לחגוג את יום הולדתה ה-26, ביטלה את החגיגות בתואנת משבר גיל העמידה, וצרחה באמבטיה כשזיהתה שערה לבנה ראשונה על ראשה. ניסיתי להרגיע אותה, והצעתי לה לצאת לפיקניק בפארק העירוני שבו נהגנו לשחק עם הילדים, לפני שהחליטו למרוד בנו (הקטן, בן השש, התמכר למוסיקת פוסט-פאנק ואמר שמעכשיו הוא מעשן רק גראס). עוד בטרם סיימה לסרב, נענתה לי. בהגיענו אל הפארק, חווינו עוגמת נפש קלה. גורד השחקים שקידם את פנינו, ‘קניון לבנטין’, אילץ אותנו לתור אחר מקום אחר להירגע, ובלית ברירה שמנו פעמינו אל בית הקולנוע החביב עלינו בלב העיר. הסרט, סאגה משפחתית רחבת יריעה, נמשך 17 דקות, ובתומן ביקרנו בחנות התקצירים. רכשתי עבורה את כל כתבי דוסטוייבסקי ובעודף קניתי קונדומים מסוכרים לילדים. כעבור שבוע, התלוננה אשתי כי בעמוד השלישי של ‘החטא ועונשו’, כשבאים חיבוטיו של רסקולניקוב על קיצם והוא רוצח את הזקנה, חסרה פיסקה. הלכתי להחליף את העותק, אך לדאבוני התחלפה חנות התקצירים במכון לרוחניות מתקדמת, מהזן המוכר לעייפה, אשר מפציר בעבריינים כבדים בפרט ובאזרחים בעלי נטיות פליליות בכלל לחסוך מעצמם את עוגמת הנפש ולחזור בתשובה עוד לפני שירצו את עונשם הפוטנציאלי בבית הכלא ויגלו את האל. אשה בגלימה ורודה ניסתה לשדל אותי להיכנס למכון, ואני הודעתי לה שהאל ואני חברים קרובים, ואת רשימת הקורבנות שלי הוא מכתיב לי מדי לילה, לפני שאני עולה על יצועי. עזבתי את המקום בכעס, עצרתי מונית וביקשתי מהנהג לקחת אותי לכתובת מגוריי. הוא אמר לי שהרחוב שבשמו נקבתי כבר מזמן לא קיים. ‘האנשים האלה…עם השמות המיושנים…למי יש כח אליהם?!’, הוא הפטיר בלעג ואמר שלדעתו רחוב החשמונאים מפעם הוא רחוב בריטני היום. ‘וגם זה לא יישאר ככה יותר מדי זמן’.

הוא טעה. בעיר המהירה, שרחובותיה שינו את שמותיהם עפ”י גחמת פקידים חובבי מוסיקה עילגת, לא הצלחתי למצוא את דירתי. חשבתי שאוכל לסמוך על מראה עיניי, אך הפרטים המוכרים הפכו לזרים, וכל תחנה אהובה נמחתה משדה הראיה והושלכה לצינוק הזיכרון. אמרתי לעצמי שאם אשוטט ברחובות מספיק זמן, אוכל לאתר את דירתי החסרה, ושוב התבדיתי. כמוני ראיתי מאות אנשים, וביום למחרת רבבות, אבודים, מבולבלים, לא מבינים מה קרה למד המהירות של העיר. בלילה הראשון שלי מחוץ לבית עדיין לא קיבלתי עליי את רוע הגזרה, וצעקתי בשמות רעייתי וילדיי עד שאיבדתי את הקול. בלילה הבא התיישבתי מתחת לעץ נטוש ליד מוזיאון הדואר בביונסה/דיזנגוף, והתייפחתי מרה. כשהתעוררתי, מיוזע לחלוטין, הרמתי את ראשי וכמעט התעוורתי. העץ, מן הסתם, נעלם. ואיתו נעלמו, לתדהמתי, שמות יקיריי. לא האמנתי, למרות ששמעתי כבר קודם לכן על התופעה האימתנית. בעיר המהירה חווים התושבים מיצוי בזמן שיא, ומה שהיה מרכז חייך לפני שנה הופך עד מהרה לזוטה חסרת משמעות, תרצה או לא תרצה. אבל אני רציתי. רציתי אל חיק משפחתי הנעלמת, שמיציתי בעל כורחי. רציתי אל האשה שתבעה מאיתנו לאכול את ארוחת הערב בזמן שהיא מבשלת כדי לחסוך בזמן. רציתי אל הבת שנגמלה מגלולות בגיל עשר. רציתי אל הבן שיצא מהארון רק כדי לחוות את התחושה. ובמיוחד רציתי לדעת שהשלושה מחפשים אותי בעיר הארורה. שבוע ימים התהלכתי כתייר ברחובות הכרך שלא חדל לשנות את פניו, והייתי עד למעשי אלימות איומים מצידם של חסרי בית כמוני שניסו להוציא דיירים מבתיהם הארעיים. חשבתי אפילו לעזוב את העיר, פשוט לחצות את הגבול אל העיר הסמוכה, שמהירותה היתה ללעג במחוזותינו, אך חששתי שיקיריי לא יצליחו לאתרי, ולמען האמת, לא היה לי מושג היכן מסתיימת עירי והיכן מתחילה העיר הבאה. ברגעים מסוימים אפילו התנחמתי במחשבה שהעצב הבלתי נסבל לא יימשך זמן רב, כי בעיר הזאת אי אפשר אחרת, אבל שבוע נוסף חלף, ועדיין לא חדלתי לחשוב עליהם. פעם אחת גנבתי בלוק ציור מחנות שעברה הסבה למסעדה יפנית, ועט ממלצרית אובדת, וביקשתי לשאוב עידוד מפני יקיריי. ישבתי מול כיכר הרצח, בוהה במאות תועים כמוני, ידי חגה במעגלים מעל הדף, וזוועה חדשה מהדהדת בי. לא. בשום פנים ואופן לא הצלחתי להיזכר בפניהם של אשתי וילדיי. העיר מרובת התווים מחתה את תוויהם מזיכרוני. הכאב בעינו עמד. זכרתי ששכחתי, וכבר לא בכיתי. העיר המהירה הרגה אותם. כן, חיסלה במחי יד. יכולתי לחלוף על פניהם, ולא לדעת. יכולתי אפילו לרצות ברעתם, בשל נסיבות הרגע. כל פרצוף שנקרה בדרכי הזכיר לי אלפי פרצופים אחרים, נטמע בהמון הכללי.

חסר הבחנה, תלוש, נרפה ואדיש. כך ראיתי את עצמי בחלון ראווה של חנות בגדים. כך גם ראיתי אותו. אולי חודש חלף מאז שהלכתי להחליף את התקציר, אולי חודשיים, ואולי יומיים, בעיר התזזית. בשובי מארוחת ערב במחיצתם של זרים גמורים שבלבלו אותי עם אח שנהרג במלחמה, תרתי אחר מקום נעים לבלות בו את הלילה. שתי קשישות שיחקו קלאס על פרצופי רודנים והזמינו אותי להצטרף אליהן. הנדתי בראשי לשלילה והמשכתי בדרכי. ילדים בני עשר רדפו אחרי ילד בן שבע בצעקות ‘פדופיל! פדופיל מסריח!’. אשה ברעלה אחזה בידה שלט- ‘יש לי הזכות למחות גם בעולם מושלם’. גבר צעיר צעד בראש מושפל, כמו אשה בעידנים פרהיסטוריים, על מעבר חצייה אקראי, וכשחש בצילי, הרים את ראשו וזיכה אותי במבט מת. לא הבנתי מה קורה. משהו התעורר בי, ולפתע פרצתי בצחוק. לא הצלחתי לרסן את קול הצחוק הגדול, ויותר ממנו, את השמחה האדירה שהציפה אותי ללא אזהרה. הגבר קימט את מיצחו, ומבלי להתכונן לרגע, שמעתי אותי שואל, ‘עד מתי אתם נמצאים פה?’ הוא השיב מוכנית, ‘עד לבן אדם האחרון…’  ‘אז אפשר…?’, חקרתי בהיסוס. ‘בוודאי’, התקרב אליי. התחבקנו. כמו אחים. כמו חברים. כמו אהובים. ובאותו הרגע ממש ידענו שאיננו טועים. הוא היה הבחור מחבורת המחבקים. אני הייתי הסרבן. העיר המהירה הפגישה בינינו שנית.

מאז לא נפרדנו. סיפרנו לעצמנו, וזה לזה, שמצאנו מה שחיפשנו, למרות שלא ממש נהנינו ממשכב הזכר, והשתמשנו בדמעות תנין כחומר סיכה. היינו שניים, בעיר של יחידים, ומפעם לפעם, כשהבחנו במבטי הקנאה שלטשו בנו יצורים נבדלים, הבטחנו להם שהכל אפשרי, מלמלנו ‘גאולה’ והבלענו פרץ צחוק דוחה. עם הזמן אפילו העלינו מופע רחוב בני שלוש דקות עבור העוברים והשבים, שבמהלכם הכרנו, גיששנו, התאהבנו, הסתכסכנו, שנאנו, נפרדנו, רצחנו, קמנו לתחייה והתגלגלנו חזרה אל צמד שחקני רחוב. ההמון אהב אותנו, לא בשל איכות המופע, אלא הודות לנכונות שלנו להעניק משהו מעצמנו. למרבה האכזבה, תוך ימים אחדים מיצינו את המופע, והעמדנו פנים, לטובת הכלל. עשינו ככל יכולתנו להסתיר את הסלידה ההדדית שהתלקחה בנו, ונשבענו לא לתת לעיר להביס אותנו. הרי ידענו מראש, שהיא תבקש להפריד בינינו, כפי שעשתה עם כל השאר.

כעבור פרק זמן לא ידוע, קפצה עלינו הזיקנה. סליחה. לא קפצה. התנפלה. ולא רק עלינו. העיר כולה נסדקה מרה, מבניה נחרצו קמטים, רחובותיה נחצו לאורכם ולרוחבם, ובאוויר עמד ריח כבד של שתן במנוסה. ברגעים אופטימיים ניסינו לדלות יופי מהנופך העתיק שהסבה הזיקנה המופלגת לעיר בת המאה, וצחקנו שהיא נראית בת אלף לפחות. רוב הזמן רצינו להיעלם. הפסקנו להעלות את המופע, וגמרנו אומר להישאר יחד. מקרטעים לאיטנו בסמטאותיה החשאיות, חיפשנו מפלט מפני מראה התינוקות המזוקנים שחייכו אלינו מתוך עריסות מחלידות הנדחקות אנה ואנה ע”י זוג ידיים מגוידות של הורים שפניהם עוטרו דליות.  ריחמנו על הפעוטות שחייהם ימוצו בטרם עת, וחדלנו לקוות.

ביום האחרון שהעיר הקציבה לתושביה, נחפזנו, כמו כולם, אלי סוף. היתה זו נהירה שכמותה לא ראינו מעודנו; מכל עבר נקבצו ההמונים המקשישים, וביניהם צעדנו אף אנו, המחבק ואני, זרועותינו שלובות וחיוכינו עוויתות. שעות ארוכות הלכנו אחרי כולם, מטים אוזן להתפוררות מסביב, ולעתים מסוככים על ראשינו מפני התקפת הטיח הפתאומית. לא ידענו כמה זמן תימשך הדרך אל היעד הסתום, עד שאחד הילדים, בראש התהלוכה, שלף את שיניו התותבות וצעק, ‘הגענו!’ המחבק הביט בי מזווית העין, ואני חייכתי למענו. בית הקברות דמם לקראתנו, וכל אחד מאיתנו, בתורו, נשכב על האדמה, עצם את עיניו וחיכה.

 

  

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