Chap­ter 1

From the out­side, the house looked the same as always: impos­ing, self-con­fi­dent, shame­less­ly claim­ing its share from a city that’s not big on giv­ing. He looked for signs of change, but he found them only in the neigh­bors’ hous­es, which seemed to be shoot­ing con­temp­tu­ous glances at his par­ents’ house. The house on the right, 9 Elharizi, which had always been taller than Ben-Ami and Elisheva’s, now appeared to be gloat­ing, hold­ing itself aloft as if it had right­ful­ly earned its stature. The house on the left, num­ber 5, seemed to be flaunt­ing its pious­ness, as if it was final­ly prov­ing itself to its more glam­orous neighbor.

For the first time in his life, Barak wished that his child­hood home could cam­ou­flage itself, could bow its head and be absorbed into the quaint lit­tle street. But the street was so nar­row that liv­ing there felt like a tremen­dous achieve­ment, as if some­one had hand-picked all the res­i­dents, and each house was so unique, so proud, that the very notion that it might feel ashamed of itself was inconceivable.

The hous­es were marked by good taste; instead of broad­cast­ing their val­ue from their front porch­es, they wore their worth with dis­cre­tion, almost with mod­esty. The street was also for­tu­nate enough to be spared the fate of oth­er charm­ing lit­tle streets, which had been over­tak­en by new res­i­dents for whom mon­ey wasn’t sim­ply a pleas­ant sound­track play­ing in the back­ground but an ide­ol­o­gy, and all it took was one such own­er to ruin an entire street, espe­cial­ly in a city like Jerusalem.

The house was filled with light, which always sur­prised peo­ple when they came in from the Jerusalem fog, and which grace­ful­ly high­light­ed the con­tents of the house: the art­work in the liv­ing room (Rauschen­berg, de Koon­ing) that Eli­she­va had insist­ed on rent­ing from the muse­um even though she served on the board of direc­tors and could have bor­rowed the paint­ings for free; the sofas and arm­chairs, the piano, the rugs — all old with­out being out of date. Dur­ing the day, when the fam­i­ly was home alone, the fur­nish­ings shim­mered in the bright, boast­ful light; as evening approached, and the dan­ger of guests increased, the light grew weak­er and the objects became more refined, cloak­ing their unique­ness in a veil of mod­esty befit­ting a house owned by refined people.

Now the house was dark, strik­ing Barak, momen­tar­i­ly, as almost aban­doned: out­side of his imag­i­na­tion, there was no sign of the four, or maybe five, police offi­cers — Barak had tried to count them sev­er­al times, as if he was play­ing a com­put­er game, try­ing to dis­tin­guish them despite their iden­ti­cal uni­forms and their sim­i­lar sil­hou­ettes, in an attempt to dis­tract him­self from the real issue, and, he lat­er real­ized, to mem­o­rize their faces so that some­day he could shoot them with­er­ing looks — walk­ing up and down the short path to their house, car­ry­ing box after box like the cops on those TV shows that had been air­ing in reruns forever.

Then he tried to pic­ture his mother’s office, and all the papers scat­tered around her house, every­thing that could qual­i­fy as ​“evi­dence,” as in, ​“The police are gath­er­ing evi­dence from the home of Eli­she­va Fogel,” and all of a sud­den it seemed to him that there wasn’t a sin­gle piece of paper left in the entire house. He thought about his own house, about where all his papers could be found, chart­ing a map in his mind, fol­low­ing an imag­i­nary trail that led him to the mes­sage pad next to the tele­phone and to a huge pile of neglect­ed pen­sion state­ments and util­i­ty bills on the book­shelf in the foy­er. But when he thought about his par­ents’ house, all he man­aged to dredge up was a sin­gle pathet­ic piece of paper on the refrig­er­a­tor door, maybe an invi­ta­tion to the grandchildren’s kinder­garten grad­u­a­tion; oth­er than that, noth­ing. For a minute he was hor­ri­fied, as if the exis­tence of scraps of paper, with their doo­dles and scrib­bles, could have attest­ed to the fact that his par­ents were real peo­ple who wrote things down every now and then, and now the paper­less house seemed to be clos­ing in on him with a new kind of steril­i­ty he had nev­er noticed before.

And then he remem­bered the wall of books, a huge wall lined with book­shelves that obscured the liv­ing room para­me­ters, shelves that were such an inte­gral part of the house that nobody even noticed them any­more. Tow­ers of paper, with innu­mer­able peo­ple, fin­ger­prints, sto­ries all bun­dled up inside.

Now, stand­ing out­side, he also remem­bered the sec­ond floor and the rooms he had hard­ly ever entered, like his mother’s study, and his father’s study, which had once been his sister’s room. If there were any papers in the house, that’s where they would most like­ly be found. Still, think­ing of these unfa­mil­iar rooms made him uncom­fort­able, per­haps because now he had to go into the house, alone.

When was the last time he had used his key to get into the house? Maybe when he and Yifat had come back from a month in Italy years ago; they had gone to study Ital­ian, they weren’t even mar­ried yet, and his par­ents, who were in the States, offered to let the two of them stay there until the peo­ple to whom they were ille­gal­ly sub­let­ting their house

in Tel Aviv left. Barak remem­bered Yifat traips­ing through the house with the kind of curios­i­ty and mis­chie­vous­ness reserved for par­ents oth­er than your own, say­ing, Wouldn’t it be wild if we found porn in their dress­er drawer?

For a moment he thought, Why am I doing this? Why me? It sud­den­ly seemed to him that it would have made more sense for his sib­lings, with their much fanci­er hous­es, to shoul­der this bur­den, as if they were well prac­ticed in nav­i­gat­ing the dark­ness of a house like this. But a minute lat­er he won­dered if he was just being sil­ly, whin­ing like a fif­teen-year-old, Why can’t some­one else do the dish­es? And any­way, their hous­es would nev­er mea­sure up to their par­ents’ house; they would have lost the com­pe­ti­tion — ill-advised to begin with — before it even started.

Barak’s sis­ter, Daph­na, and her hus­band, Boaz, had a love­ly and spa­cious house in Ami­na­dav, and even Eitan and Michal had an airy, ultra-fash­ion­able apart­ment (albeit in Jaf­fa, next to Tel Aviv). But the Jerusalem-ness of these hous­es was muf­fled, a faint echo of the moth­er ship. Eli­she­va and Ben-Ami, their par­ents, shared a pro­found rev­er­ence for Jerusalem: its archi­tec­ture, its art, its tex­ture, its weath­er — a pure­ly aes­thet­ic admi­ra­tion, with­out a trace of nation­al­ism, of course, since both of them were, in prin­ci­ple, strong pro­po­nents of peace. They prid­ed them­selves on their exten­sive knowl­edge of the city’s per­son­al­i­ties, of its anec­dotes both large and small, of its build­ings, even of its spe­cif­ic court­yards and bal­conies where events of his­tor­i­cal mag­ni­tude had tak­en place, and they had an entire shelf devot­ed to books on the city’s build­ings and neigh­bor­hoods. Most of the books were edit­ed by a well-known archi­tect, a die-hard Jerusalemite and a trea­sure trove of leg­end and lore and, of course, a close

friend of the Fogels. They loved Jerusalem with all their soul — as much as one could love it and still be a leftist.

There­fore, it nev­er occurred to any of their chil­dren to drag them out of Jerusalem and into the despon­den­cy of their own homes unless it was absolute­ly vital. Once, and only once — on his wife’s for­ti­eth birth­day — Daphna’s hus­band, Boaz, tried to break the rou­tine. His love seemed so fresh back then, so com­pelling, his mar­riage too new to be sub­ject to the family’s rules and reg­u­la­tions, and he invit­ed the fam­i­ly to Ami­na­dav for a bar­be­cue. Ben-Ami was abroad, but Eli­she­va came and behaved her­self: she was a pro­fes­sor of Israeli his­to­ry and a mem­ber of the Friends of Soro­ka Hos­pi­tal, the Israel Phil­har­mon­ic Board of Direc­tors, and the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Israel Muse­um, and she knew the appro­pri­ate com­port­ment. Nonethe­less, the exper­i­ment was nev­er repeat­ed, espe­cial­ly not by Boaz, who found him­self regret­ting his deci­sion even before the kebabs were served. He told Daph­na and Barak, You know, your moth­er is a nat­ur­al at this kind of thing, and Daph­na and Barak didn’t have to ask what he meant.

And so, regret­tably, Ben-Ami and Eli­she­va added this deba­cle to their ever-grow­ing cat­a­log of Boaz’s faults, at the top of which was his ten­den­cy to talk too open­ly about mon­ey, as if mon­ey was just a thing, like all the oth­er things in the world. With all due respect, mon­ey was mon­ey, even if you didn’t have it, and espe­cial­ly if you did. Not every­thing need­ed to be said out loud.