for her in a hall in Dizengoff Street, close to where they lived on Arlozorov Street.
But Mandy had eyes in her head. She had received a very conservative education, and it was in her bones. As a woman pushing fifty, she knew that instead of letting Berger feel her body she should keep a safe distance from him, full of hot stones. Gruber talked a lot about the contradiction in the personality of the masseur, the Israeli triathlon champion, and it made her blood boil, but she didn’t say anything, and only asked herself how many more times she would have to hear about the marvelous duality in this interesting person’s personality.
Oren Berger, the dualist, wasn’t crazy about the new neighborhood that had gone up almost overnight, but he had big ambitions to be both an internist and an acupuncturist and a doctor of Chinese medicine, and he needed a lot of patience. He had patience andmotivation.
He would begin his rounds in Telba-N. on the corner of Yocheved Bat Miriam and Alexander Penn Street, and go on from there, to all the new streets which were almost all named after poets and writers of Hebrew and Jewish literature. According to what he had found out, they were all big guns in poetry and literature and they were all dead. In the street named after Stefan Zweig, which he found on Google, he had two clients in almost every building, and it was a relatively long street.
On Fridays he would do his weekly round there, and then, at about five, he would go home and shower. On Saturday he would go out with his girlfriend to conquer the Judean Desert on his motorcycle. He never went over sixty miles per hour, even though he could. He could do up to two hundred and twenty, but he didn’t like the resistance from the air.
Gruber thought a lot about Oren Berger, he actually forced himself to study this Baroque character. Sometimes, when Berger was giving him a massage and loosening the knots in his muscles, Gruber thought how lucky he was to have won the Israel Prize, and that he didn’t have to run and swim and cycle for kilometers to do so (Gruber didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, and at the age of fifty it was a little late to learn, never mind all that bullshit about how it’s never too late). At the same time, he envied the young man for his amazing body.
He compared their two statuses and thought that they were more or less on a par, except that people would never call Gruber the past winner of the Israel prize, which gave him an advantage. He would never lose the title or the prize. In this sense he felt like the Frank Sinatra of Israeli science.
Oren Berger was never bored with Gruber. He felt close to Gruber, admired his quick thinking, and thought that to him Gruber could really talk, perhaps because they had both done something for the State of Israel. Therefore he felt it was legitimate to talk to the scientist about whatever was on his mind, and sometimeshe would embark on long monologues about his exploits with his biker friends in the desert. Berger and his friends met every Saturday and rode to all the craters they felt like, as if Israel was full of craters.
Once Gruber had even asked him to stop bragging about his amazing life as a twenty-five year old.
A guy who on the previous Saturday had been to the ruins of a Nabatean city, and who had been there the Saturday before that too—how great was that?
By the way, the idea of implanting artificial shoulder blades came to Amanda Gruber from Oren Berger, who in the course of the two massages he had given her before she changed to the hot stones, told her about three of his clients, two white-collar and one from King George Street in Tel Aviv, women whose posture had been transformed by the operation. The one from King George Street walked round the city center with a bare back, proud of the carved peaks of her shoulder blades. It was actually through this woman that Mandy had reached Dr. Carmi Yagoda.
THE CURRENT MASSEUR made mincemeat of Oren
But Mandy had eyes in her head. She had received a very conservative education, and it was in her bones. As a woman pushing fifty, she knew that instead of letting Berger feel her body she should keep a safe distance from him, full of hot stones. Gruber talked a lot about the contradiction in the personality of the masseur, the Israeli triathlon champion, and it made her blood boil, but she didn’t say anything, and only asked herself how many more times she would have to hear about the marvelous duality in this interesting person’s personality.
Oren Berger, the dualist, wasn’t crazy about the new neighborhood that had gone up almost overnight, but he had big ambitions to be both an internist and an acupuncturist and a doctor of Chinese medicine, and he needed a lot of patience. He had patience andmotivation.
He would begin his rounds in Telba-N. on the corner of Yocheved Bat Miriam and Alexander Penn Street, and go on from there, to all the new streets which were almost all named after poets and writers of Hebrew and Jewish literature. According to what he had found out, they were all big guns in poetry and literature and they were all dead. In the street named after Stefan Zweig, which he found on Google, he had two clients in almost every building, and it was a relatively long street.
On Fridays he would do his weekly round there, and then, at about five, he would go home and shower. On Saturday he would go out with his girlfriend to conquer the Judean Desert on his motorcycle. He never went over sixty miles per hour, even though he could. He could do up to two hundred and twenty, but he didn’t like the resistance from the air.
Gruber thought a lot about Oren Berger, he actually forced himself to study this Baroque character. Sometimes, when Berger was giving him a massage and loosening the knots in his muscles, Gruber thought how lucky he was to have won the Israel Prize, and that he didn’t have to run and swim and cycle for kilometers to do so (Gruber didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, and at the age of fifty it was a little late to learn, never mind all that bullshit about how it’s never too late). At the same time, he envied the young man for his amazing body.
He compared their two statuses and thought that they were more or less on a par, except that people would never call Gruber the past winner of the Israel prize, which gave him an advantage. He would never lose the title or the prize. In this sense he felt like the Frank Sinatra of Israeli science.
Oren Berger was never bored with Gruber. He felt close to Gruber, admired his quick thinking, and thought that to him Gruber could really talk, perhaps because they had both done something for the State of Israel. Therefore he felt it was legitimate to talk to the scientist about whatever was on his mind, and sometimeshe would embark on long monologues about his exploits with his biker friends in the desert. Berger and his friends met every Saturday and rode to all the craters they felt like, as if Israel was full of craters.
Once Gruber had even asked him to stop bragging about his amazing life as a twenty-five year old.
A guy who on the previous Saturday had been to the ruins of a Nabatean city, and who had been there the Saturday before that too—how great was that?
By the way, the idea of implanting artificial shoulder blades came to Amanda Gruber from Oren Berger, who in the course of the two massages he had given her before she changed to the hot stones, told her about three of his clients, two white-collar and one from King George Street in Tel Aviv, women whose posture had been transformed by the operation. The one from King George Street walked round the city center with a bare back, proud of the carved peaks of her shoulder blades. It was actually through this woman that Mandy had reached Dr. Carmi Yagoda.
THE CURRENT MASSEUR made mincemeat of Oren
Similar Books
