Eliezer, how can one explain? Unlike Dvora, if Eliezer didn’t exist, we wouldn’t know how to invent him. That’s how much of an unreliable character he is. 

In their first conversation that Aaron remembers, they spoke of poetry. Eliezer asked Aaron which poets he liked, and Aaron answered William Blake and Yehuda Amichai. Eliezer said that that’s a lovely coincidence, because they were favorites of his as well, and he’d read all their work. He asked Aaron what he did, and Aaron vented that he was busy breaking, like the waves against the rocks, against a course named Linear Algebra B. Eliezer responded that that was another lovely coincidence, because he was just teaching linear algebra at the university level, so he might be able to help. He asked Aaron what he liked to do, and Aaron said to write fiction, and Eliezer said that it was a surprising third coincidence, because he too had a keen interest in creative writing. 

And indeed, it seemed like a series of wonderful coincidences. What Aaron didn’t know at the time was that it didn’t matter which poets he mentioned, Hebrew, English, or Russian, the answer would have been the same: Eliezer would casually mention that he happened to be well read in them. Same for the mathematical subjects, and for economics, cryptography, network protocols, continental philosophy, Eastern philosophy, classic poetry, classic rock, rap, the history of the West, Talmud, the New Testament, and so on and so on. He was simply knowledgeable on all of those subjects, and didn’t see it as worth mentioning.

Popular media teaches us to expect certain tendencies from this kind of person, like a lack of empathy caused by an intellectual hyperfixation. But Eliezer, when he sees an opportunity to alleviate someone’s suffering, charges at it with a ferociousness that would have made Schopenhauer weep. Aaron’s writing would have never gotten where it did if Eliezer hadn’t taken the time to read hundreds of pages of rough drafts and comment, sometimes snarkily but always with compassion, ask crucial questions, make suggestions. In the horrible months before the breakup, when Aaron was desperate for somebody to whine to, Eliezer not only listened, but made Aaron talk, stopping him only to ask that he repeat some sentence broken up by the faltering internet connection in Eliezer’s parents’ house. At the end, Eliezer would ask one question—and by the time Aaron was done answering, his entire perspective had shifted. The fact that this text could not have been written without Eliezer is the tip of the iceberg of debt Aaron owes this ubermensch.  

Aaron tries to get as much writing done as possible in the morning before meeting Eliezer, so he’ll be able to ask his advice about characterization. He doesn’t feel like he’s got a grasp on the nomads’ characters, and isn’t managing to project onto the page the depths he’s glimpsed in them. He struggles with the words until Eliezer wakes up at noon, then makes the drive over to Herzliya. 

Eliezer opens the door, a whole forehead taller than Aaron and twenty kilograms lighter. He would look like a dancer if it wasn’t for the rigidity in his shoulder, the kind that comes from true aestheticism, true ignorance of one’s physical needs, be it nutrition or movement. 

“May I offer you water?” Eliezer asks, as if they were both Bedouins in the desert. 

Aaron nods and draws an empty bottle out of his bag. Eliezer bows and goes to the kitchen sink, exposing the living room, and the television at its center like a hearse that shows the news Aaron has managed to avoid so far. Someone, one can assume, is sitting in the living room, watching the anchors on screen discussing the massacre and counter-massacre, the most thorough in the history of the conflict. From where he’s standing, he can’t see if there’s anyone in the couch in front of the TV, and doesn’t really want to check. Eliezer wouldn’t sit in the living room nor get his news from the mainstream media. Whoever it is that’s watching, Aaron isn’t close enough to them to ask that they turn the TV off. Eliezer returns with the bottle and Aaron thanks him as he takes it, and drinks.

They go up to the tiny bedroom. The bed takes up about half of the floor area, leaving a narrow band of living space, and when they sit on their chairs, the bed’s corner juts between them. 

“Where are you staying now?” Eliezer asks. “Not with your parents, I hope.”

“And if I was, what would you do about it?”

He gestures towards his bed. “I’d give you the left half, Alcibiades, and we’d argue all night long who received lead in the barter, and who got gold.”

“Is that why you got me into Plato? So you’d have someone to make these jokes with?”

“And wasn’t it worth it?” He shrugs. “But really, where?”

“In the house of somebody I’ve never met. The ex-roommate from Florentin moved into a house with a safespace and a cat that needs looking after, and she asked me to stay there with her because she was scared.”

“The cat asked you to move in with her? Sorry. So I understand you’d rather live with her than alone in Shammai’s apartment?”

“No, absolutely not—and anyway, she left and Shammai’s back.”

“And yet when I write stories people tell me my circumstances are too complicated.”

“Funny you should say that…” Aaron tells him that indeed, there’s a chance that the words they are saying right now might become a part of the story that you’re reading, and asks him if he’d like a pseudonym. 

“What do I care? Use my real name. Did the theme reveal itself already?”

“Not sure. Something about how war reflects in every facet of Israeli life, that the culture was forged by it. And about Judaism and secularity. And about the Talmud, much more than I expected. I only read the pages you recommended but that was enough to see how deeply set into our culture that text is.”

Eliezer nods enthusiastically. “Right? There’re so many Talmudic and Biblical phrases in everyday language. I especially like the ones that say the opposite of what people use them for.”

“Walla? Like what?”

Eliezer cartoonishly rolls up nonexistent sleeves. “So it’s one thing when you have ‘the dream and its breaking,’ which people use to mean disillusionment—but Gideon originally used it to mean the dream and its interpretation. And then there’s ‘For the man is a tree in the field,’ which originally was meant as ‘Is man a tree in the field? Obviously not.’” He pauses, as he always does when it’s important to him to say something accurately. “But when these scum of the earth that pretend to be our government say that there’s going to be an investigation, and ‘there will be no sacred cows,’ what do they mean? They mean it in the Hindu sense, something that must be protected from all harm. But do you know what they do to holy cows in Judaism? You guessed it: they slaughter them. So what are they saying, actually, when they say there won’t be any sacred cows? That they are going to protect Bibi from all harm? Because they will.”

  The room shakes, and the sound of thunder that is not thunder at all penetrates through the closed window, through the blinds and heavy curtains. “Good, I saved you a siren in Tel Aviv.”

“How do you know that was in Tel Aviv?”

“It’s rare for a rocket to get further north than Herzliya, and if it was further down than Tel Aviv we wouldn’t hear it.” He opens his laptop, taps it three or four times (which implies the website was already open in the background) and nods. “Yeah, north Tel Aviv.” He turns his computer chair back to Aaron.

“You see?” Aaron gestures towards the computer. “That’s the feeling I’m trying to get at.”

“You and me both. Somebody from work sent me an email. ‘Hi, hope you’re alright, it’s so horrible what’s happening there,’ all that.”

“Yeah, Americans don’t really know what to say in this kind of situation.”

“No, he’s a French Jew. He knows what’s up, experienced a couple of rocket sirens when he was here, but he doesn’t know what to do now and I don’t know how to explain to him. Every once in a while, I run to the shelter, but compared to other people I’m in zero danger. I sit here, and suddenly I hear fighter planes—not one or two but a whole squadron—and I stop what I’m doing for a second, and think: There are people that are going to die in Gaza in ten minutes. People that in ten minutes will say goodbye to their children, or parents, or loved ones, people that are going to be buried under the wreckage and know that nobody’s coming to rescue them with the chaos that’s going on. That the thing they feared most finally happened. And then I go back to playing Heroes Three, because what else can I do? How do I tell him that?”

“I saw a picture,” Aaron says. “Of a British journalist in some war zone around here. He’s on his belly on the broken floor, pressing his helmet to his head with both hands, the fear of death in his eyes, and when you look at him you really feel like death is going to come any second. Until you look behind him, and you see two Israeli border guard officers, standing normally and looking at one of their phones, and you know what expression they have?”

“Tired boredom?”

“Yes. Exactly. That’s what the feeling’s like here. But how dangerous is it, really? I need to figure out whether I should fly back to exile.”

“Listen, my young friend,” Eliezer says, ignoring the fact that Aaron is two years older than him. “There are three levels of risk. If you’re in Israel in ordinary times, then it’s somewhat dangerous here, the most dangerous thing being the cars—there isn’t any country in the European Union with such high per-capita mortality on the road. It’s of course less dangerous if you’re Ashkenazi in Tel Aviv, and more if you’re an Arab in Tira. Partly because of systematic neglect, and partly because Arabic drivers, especially young ones, tend to drive faster and not put on seat belts. The second level is when there are rockets falling, like when you last visited in May. It’s a little more dangerous, but still less so than just walking around the average US city. Last time, for instance, there were two direct hits in Ramat Gan. This time, even though the bombings are much less frequent, there were two hits on houses in Tel Aviv. And there’s a third situation, where Hezbollah¹ join in the game. In that situation, everyone who actually wants to keep living, like you, needs to get out of here.”

“And you, Eliezer? Why aren’t you getting out of here?”

He pulls the exact same face he did when Aaron asked about using his name. “Me? What do I care?” And changes the subject. Aaron lets him. If ignorance is bliss, what kind of suffering is the life of a person who knows so much?

They talk about things that have nothing to do with the war—things they read recently, Star Trek episodes, meditative techniques, the difficulties of writing believable characters. Aaron tries to encourage Eliezer to write again, knowing he will be ten times better at it than Aaron, but gets the usual refusal. When Aaron doesn’t notice the time, it’s Eliezer who sets him back on the straight and narrow. “Didn’t you say you need to return the car to your parents?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I’d stay longer, if I could.”

Eliezer nods knowingly. “Yeah.”

On the roads of Hertezlia, on the way to the highway, a biker pops a wheelie right next to Aaron, even before the light turns green. There’s something shaky in his rise, which ends in a heavy landing on the front wheel. He stabilizes as he moves ahead. This behavior seems important to Aaron, but he’s not sure why. On the highway he notices how beautiful the clouds are after the rain, like a woman after an orgasm, beads of sweat covering everything, golden curls glistening in the setting sun. The letters on the sign for the next exit are painted over in gray, as if the exit was canceled and whoever needed to fix the sign did it in the quickest, cheapest way possible. The writing for the next exit, which is probably still functioning, is hidden by overgrown shrubbery nobody came to cut down. So he doesn’t know what the next exits are. But that’s not so bad—sometimes you can keep moving forward without knowing everything. 

The radio sings ‘there’s no more fear, there’s no more anything. I’m a strawman, a crooked tree. The kids didn’t grow up, just grew taller and found a job.’

NEXT: Contestants

1. Hezbollah (/’Party of Allah’ or ‘Party of God’) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group. (From Wikipedia). ↩︎