A Pigeon and a Boy Read Free

minister not only agrees they should hear differing opinions, he
insists
on it.”
    I went up to the room assigned to me—not all groups are as generous as this one—and I showered and phoned home. Six rings and a sigh of relief: no answer; Liora is not at home. Or maybe she is at home and she knows it’s me and has decided not to pick up the phone. Or perhaps it’sthe telephone itself, once again identifying the caller and once again choosing to ignore me and remain silent.
    “Hello,” I said. “Hello …” and then: “Liora? It’s me. If you’re there, would you be kind enough to pick up?”
    But it was my own voice—matter-of-fact and polite—that responded: “You have reached the home of Liora and Yair Mendelsohn. We can’t come to the phone right now,” and after my voice, hers — impatient and enthralling in its Americanness, its hoarseness: “Leave your message after the beep.”
    I hung up and phoned Tirzah on her mobile. Tirzah never answers with “Hello.” Sometimes it’s “Yes,” and sometimes “Just a moment, please,” and then I can hear her giving instructions to people, and I listen with pleasure.
    “All right,” she said, “I’m with you now”
    “Why don’t you come up to Jerusalem, Tiraleh? They gave me a bed that’s too big and a full moon and a window overlooking the walls of the Old City”
    “It’s you, luvey? I thought it was that pest of an engineer from the Public Works Department.”
    Tirzah doesn’t use my name. Sometimes she calls me Iraleh, the way her father did when we were kids—“Here are Iraleh and Tiraleh,” he would proclaim whenever he saw us together—and sometimes, affectionately, she calls me “luvey”
    “It’s me. A different pest.”
    She laughed. Now she’s finally convinced: not
that
pest, but
this
pest. When Tirzah laughs, I’m happy I can take it as a compliment; she laughs because of me.
    “Where are you?”
    “At the King David. So, are you coming?”
    She laughed again. Certainly a nice proposition, absolutely, she and I and the bed and the window with the moon and the walls of the Old City a very tempting proposition, but the next morning they would be pouring the concrete at a project in Haifa Bay and she had two meetings with people from the Defense Ministry—one with the jerk from the Building Department and one with the nice guy from Finance—“and I was hoping we’d have a chance to meet at our house, because there are a few decisions we have to make.”
    I ignored the “our house” and asked what decisions she was talking about.“The usual: floor tiles, window frames, what colors to paint the walls. Don’t worry, I’ll decide; you just have to be there.”
    “Tomorrow I finish up with these Americans and then I can come.”
    “How are they?”
    “You won’t believe it: one of them was in the Palmach.”
    “You love me?” she asked playfully
    “Yes. And yes,” I answered, preempting her next question, which would be, as always, “And you miss me?”
    “Do you want to hear what else we’ve managed with the renovations?”
    “I’ve got to tell you something this guy suddenly told me.”
    “Stories are for bedtime.”
    “I’m in bed.”
    “For when we’re both in bed, not just you. Tomorrow night. We’ll inaugurate the full moon and you’ll tell me everything. And bring me one of those fried-egg “samwiches” from Glick’s kiosk—have them go heavy on the salt and tell them to sear the hot pepper on the grill. Tell them it’s for me. Don’t forget to tell them: It’s for Meshulam Fried’s daughter!”
    I got dressed, looked at myself in the mirror, and decided to skip the dinner and the important member of Knesset from the opposition and his differing opinions. I stripped off my clothes, climbed back into my large bed, and napped fitfully, annoyingly facing the full moon and the walls of the Old City, and awakened more tired than before, then got dressed and went down to the bar.
4
    T HE OLD