A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [76]
clothes.
Nissim73:
?
Novelist55:
I mean that I only have 5 or 6 items of cloth-
ing. I like seeing beautiful clothes on other
people but feel strange wearing anything but
jeans myself.
Nissim73:
That’s definitely just you.
Novelist55:
You mean I can’t blame everything on Eldar?
Nissim73:
My parents are into having every latest gadget.
Novelist55:
You mean the whole ascetic ethic is gone …
Nissim73:
hold on a sec
Nissim73:
ok I’m back, had to check something.
Novelist55:
Rakefet’s novel made me realize something.
Taboos are there for a reason. They protect
the vulnerable.
Nissim73:
What happened on her kibbutz, the pedo-
phile—that can happen anywhere. And people
can ignore it anywhere.
Novelist55:
That’s true. Did you have a chance to ask your
aunt if she knows who that sleepy teacher was,
with the honey-coloured hair? I really liked her.
I think the early mornings were hard on her …
Nissim73:
I keep forgetting. I don’t talk to her that often.
Novelist55:
I’m trying to figure out how much I want to say
about Martin’s suicide/accident.
Nissim73:
What happened exactly?
Novelist55:
He was on guard duty, alone for some reason,
and he either shot himself or his Sten went off
by mistake, which apparently does happen.
Nissim73:
Yes, it happened to someone on our base. Not
a Sten of course.
Novelist55:
Poor guy.
Nissim73:
Who, Martin or the guy on my base?
Novelist55:
!
Nissim73:
Have you ever considered suicide?
Novelist55:
No. Life always interested me too much. And
especially since I’ve had my daughter, there’s
nothing I want more than to look after her. It
makes me happy
Novelist55:
just to buy her a new toothbrush …
Nissim73:
Do you breathe down her neck?
Novelist55:
I’m way too busy, Nissim. What about you?
You’re not planning to kill yourself I hope.
Nissim73:
Are you kidding? And miss the next elections?
Novelist55:
:)
Nissim73:
You know about the murder-suicide at Ramat
Hakovesh? I think it was last year.
Novelist55:
Is that a kibbutz?
Nissim73:
Yes. I once went out with someone from there.
Anyhow, one old guy killed the manager and
then himself in an argument over money. Not
exactly money, but the whole privatization
process.
Novelist55:
?
Nissim73:
A lot of kibbutzim are calling in outsiders to
manage the process and suddenly after being
in charge of your life for forty years and not
having to think about money, some stranger
is deciding what your job is worth, what your
pension should be.
Nissim73:
So there’s huge resentment and conflict. The
transition is too radical. I can really under-
stand that guy. It’s cruel, the way it’s being
done in some places. A blogger said it’s
straight out of Orwell. I agree.
Novelist55:
I keep finding out more and more. And I want
to include everything in my novel … I haven’t
even dealt with the whole communal sleeping
thing. How it started, how it ended. I wanted
to include what my father said—that the best
thing about Eldar was having my mother
to himself in the evenings, without the kids
around. But I don’t know where to put that.
Nissim73:
Don’t get overwhelmed.
Novelist55:
It’s the reason I could never write science fic-
tion. I’d have to figure out a way not to spend
the entire novel explaining.
Nissim73:
I like that. Kibbutz as scifi.
Novelist55:
You know that guy who sued his kibbutz for
traumatizing him?
Nissim73:
That’s sort of a cliché by now, don’t you think?
I know that guy by the way.
Novelist55:
It’s a cliché in Israel. But not in the rest of the
world.
Novelist55:
Besides, I hate that trivializing. It’s very Israeli—I
mean not only Israeli but it’s something you
see a lot in Israel. Everyone always saying azov
[let it rest] and shtuyot [nonsense]. Especially
shtuyot.
Nissim73:
You’re sentimental.
Novelist55:
That’s it—it’s supposedly the fear of