to blame, again they are creating the same feelings for each other. Is there a way out from this accursed circle, and is he really interested in getting out; perhaps there’s no point in making an effort, in drawing her close to him and embracing her round the waist and thanking her for coming, there’s no point in inviting her to drink coffee with him in the cafeteria nearby. He glances at his watch and says drily, I must dash to the office, I have an important meeting, stay with her here until I come back, all right?
Without another glance at her or at his mother he’s out of there, his hands still probing his neck as if trying to loosen a tight collar, or perhaps change ties, feeling a surge of excitement as he passes the bench where that man was sitting, his short-term neighbour, before being taken to the car, gilded like a royal carriage; there can’t be many cars like that round here, and suddenly it seems to him nothing would be simpler than locating a gold Citroën in the biggest city in the country, and in a state of agitation he walks on under the ferocious sun of early summer, which is likewise stretching out incandescent fingers to massage his neck.
He loves this path leading to his office, the combination of elegance and squalor; to reach it you walk between piles of broken bottles and empty crack-cocaine bags, with smells of urine and dog faeces, and suddenly before your eyes the building is revealed in all its antique glory, revealed and at once disappearing again, on account of two ugly extra storeys tacked on to the top of it. He is like this too, at least in his own eyes: the handsome and debonair young man to whom the years have added storeys, suspending a repulsive stomach from his midriff, sticking puffy bags under his eyes, and plucking out his smooth, black and glossy hair, a kind of cruel joke: let’s see how you cope with a different façade, and he’s already almost giving up; how wearisome is this daily struggle, and how little depends on it, and who is it for anyway, after all Shlomit and the boys accept him as he is, they don’t have much choice, and only at certain moments, like now in the doorway of the office when he stands watching his intern, does he believe it would be possible to peel off all of these things with a single accurate touch.
How he loves to stand in the doorway when she hasn’t noticed him, to look at her as if her image is projected on a screen and impossible to touch, and hence his attempts at closeness are not so different from the efforts of his younger son to touch the colourful images that he sees, but the truth is he doesn’t want to touch her, touching is such a crude and simple thing. She moves through her little domain stiffly, and when she turns her back the broad line of her bra appears, constricting her back, and beneath it the gathered folds of her flesh, but she doesn’t know, and her not-knowing touches his heart when he is party to a private secret hidden even from her.
Until a year ago he had two interns in his office, and it seemed to him sometimes, especially when he was on his way in, that this was what coming home should be like, so much more pleasant than returning to Shloamit and the boys. Wasn’t this his true home, wasn’t this his real family, single-parent father to two grown-up, talented girls? He enjoyed supervising them, and even when they made mistakes he wasn’t too censorious, and the fact that they were replaced every year or so didn’t impair the sense of family but even deepened it, since even in a family it really makes no difference which of them are the practical souls; it’s a question of what functions they are required to fulfil.
Lately his work has contracted, and so he has been forced to make do with one intern, becoming a single parent father to a single daughter, and at the beginning he was reminded now and then of his first-born son Tomer and his long years as an only child, and it was only after Yotam was born
Without another glance at her or at his mother he’s out of there, his hands still probing his neck as if trying to loosen a tight collar, or perhaps change ties, feeling a surge of excitement as he passes the bench where that man was sitting, his short-term neighbour, before being taken to the car, gilded like a royal carriage; there can’t be many cars like that round here, and suddenly it seems to him nothing would be simpler than locating a gold Citroën in the biggest city in the country, and in a state of agitation he walks on under the ferocious sun of early summer, which is likewise stretching out incandescent fingers to massage his neck.
He loves this path leading to his office, the combination of elegance and squalor; to reach it you walk between piles of broken bottles and empty crack-cocaine bags, with smells of urine and dog faeces, and suddenly before your eyes the building is revealed in all its antique glory, revealed and at once disappearing again, on account of two ugly extra storeys tacked on to the top of it. He is like this too, at least in his own eyes: the handsome and debonair young man to whom the years have added storeys, suspending a repulsive stomach from his midriff, sticking puffy bags under his eyes, and plucking out his smooth, black and glossy hair, a kind of cruel joke: let’s see how you cope with a different façade, and he’s already almost giving up; how wearisome is this daily struggle, and how little depends on it, and who is it for anyway, after all Shlomit and the boys accept him as he is, they don’t have much choice, and only at certain moments, like now in the doorway of the office when he stands watching his intern, does he believe it would be possible to peel off all of these things with a single accurate touch.
How he loves to stand in the doorway when she hasn’t noticed him, to look at her as if her image is projected on a screen and impossible to touch, and hence his attempts at closeness are not so different from the efforts of his younger son to touch the colourful images that he sees, but the truth is he doesn’t want to touch her, touching is such a crude and simple thing. She moves through her little domain stiffly, and when she turns her back the broad line of her bra appears, constricting her back, and beneath it the gathered folds of her flesh, but she doesn’t know, and her not-knowing touches his heart when he is party to a private secret hidden even from her.
Until a year ago he had two interns in his office, and it seemed to him sometimes, especially when he was on his way in, that this was what coming home should be like, so much more pleasant than returning to Shloamit and the boys. Wasn’t this his true home, wasn’t this his real family, single-parent father to two grown-up, talented girls? He enjoyed supervising them, and even when they made mistakes he wasn’t too censorious, and the fact that they were replaced every year or so didn’t impair the sense of family but even deepened it, since even in a family it really makes no difference which of them are the practical souls; it’s a question of what functions they are required to fulfil.
Lately his work has contracted, and so he has been forced to make do with one intern, becoming a single parent father to a single daughter, and at the beginning he was reminded now and then of his first-born son Tomer and his long years as an only child, and it was only after Yotam was born
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