The Expelled Read online

  The Expelled

  Mois Benarroch

  Translated by Pamela Daccache

  “The Expelled”

  Written By Mois Benarroch

  Copyright © 2015 Mois Benarroch

  All rights reserved

  Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

  www.babelcube.com

  Translated by Pamela Daccache

  Cover Design © 2015 M.Benarroch

  “Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The Expelled

  if I needed you | would you come to me | for to ease my pain

  And who by fire, who by water,

  "Too long in Exile

  You can never go back home again"

  Van Morrison

  I was on my way back from Tel Aviv. A common ride on the 480 bus. It was 9:30 p.m. I had spent the day listening to music at my friend Rami's house, who had a sound system that must have cost fifty thousand dollars or more. We had discussed the qualities of the DVD-Audio, a new format that was the closest to an analog you could listen to on a digital disk. We listened several times to John Gorka’s new album, “The Gypsy Life”. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Nobody sat next to me, I spent the ride home imagining and dreaming about the great success my next book will have. I was two months away from publishing my, what was then, newest novel, that was finally accepted by one of the best publishers and not in one of those small ones that disappear when the owner retires or dies. A good publisher with nationwide distribution. I thought about how boring a writer's life is. It is so boring that the only thing that saves us from boredom is making up stories, like young children who create imaginary friends and give them names to fill their world. Everything bores me, friends, music, women, politics, debates about Marxism, Zionism, it all bores me. Well, it interests me for a couple of hours a month, but that's it. Then they write biographies and people think that a writer's life is full of adventures. Bukowski, to give an example, spent most of his time sitting alone in shitty bars, bored like a wolf. I don't know why I thought about a wolf, I don't know if wolves get bored. Then someone comes and writes a book to explain that he didn't fuck as many women as he describes. No kidding, if he had slept with so many women, then when would he had found the time to write all those poems and novels. But people think that books write themselves.

  I went to Tel Aviv because I had finished reviewing the galley proofs of my novel for the fifth or sixth time. Until the last moment, I found a mistake, a Spanish tilde. Hours and days and months of heavy and boring work. I went to Tel Aviv to rest from that hostile work and to see the sea. I didn't get to see the sea, but I felt its scent and its waves. I stayed with the music. Rami works at Reuters and we never know if he is going to have time off or if they are going to call him to film some urgent event or a press conference of some boring politician that wants to make an impression.

  So, there I was, at the end of the trip, on my way back home, back to that cold and bourgeois relation with my wife. Her, doubting whether to stay with me or get a divorce, and spending thousands of shekels to that madness, and I, as usual, leaning more toward a divorce but without even lifting a finger. I was again out of work, after a good season of translations, there I was, months, with nothing, I was beginning to drown. Although those seven or eight months that I had been out of work turned out to be very productive. In that time, I wrote one long novel and three short ones, and I was able to finish a book on which I had been working for years. Everything was going pretty well from a creative point of view, but from an economic perspective everything was drifting. My wife was providing for me. I couldn't get a divorce. Or perhaps it was what most definitely had to happen.

  And then, I got up from my seat, and at that moment I saw her in front of me. First, the amazement, then, staring at her until she turned and went out the front door, and I from the back.

  Clearly, these things happen, we don't know how millions of genetic cells are transmitted and I have already been told about ten times that I look a lot like someone who others know, they call me names that are not mine and even once a woman stared at me unable to shake her eyes off of me for ten minutes and then told me that I looked like a boyfriend of hers who had died in a car accident, and I was beginning to believe she had fallen in love with my beautiful eyes ...

  It was her, more her than her, the same face, and while getting off the bus I saw her walking toward the security check, which looked more appropriate to an airport than a bus station, it was her and more than her, but twenty-five years hadn't gone by, not for her, she was wearing the same clothes she wore, the same boots with medium heel, a red miniskirt that was not fashionable, with black stockings, super black, a fine black leather jacket and I could even guess what was under it.

  Waiting for my turn to pass my bag through the machine that was looking for bombs, I lost her from my sight, I thought forever. It could very well be the pure imagination of a writer, an idea to write a novel or a story, although I am not very good at writing short stories, I need more words. It must have been just that, one should not play with coincidences or imagination. And there are far more important things in life, such as discrimination against minorities, poverty, the Iranian atomic bomb, religious extremism, one must write about such topics. Right?

  Yes, there are important things to write about, but you write what you write and not what you should. Now in my town, radicals are always on my case, they say I am not left-winged enough, or anti-Zionist as they believe I should be, after reading three or four of my poems. And just because I said out loud what everyone was saying quietly, that Sephardic Jews suffer a terrible discrimination in Israel from other Jews, the Europeans, who think they are superior in the most racist terms of the European and Western perspective and that's why they believe it is their duty to prevent Moroccan or Sephardic literary output. Well, so what, I said it and I thought I could keep writing my stupid stuff, the stories I imagine to fill my life and the characters I created to escape from my loneliness. But since then, since I said it, I realize I touched a button that plays an entire movie and the questions are always the same, do I think that there is still discrimination, yes, and more than before, and worse, and again and again the same questions. I am sick of it. I'm a writer, I am neither left-wing nor right-wing, I'm not in favor of any party or any full, I'm not radical, nor extreme right nor extreme left, that's it, I've said it and the fuck with anyone who expects anything else from me. Fuck.

  Yeah, okay, it's over, we're not here to deal with this mess but to tell the story of that woman on the bus, so relax, we won't get mad or fight with anyone, it's a story about love, indifference, fiction, reality or reality that merges with fiction. Because it is the worst case, the most unusual, the most impossible to believe and write, that story actually happened to me, not like anything I've written, that people think is autobiographical and it never is. Everyone is always wrong. When something is based on my life they think it's fiction, and when it's fiction they think it's based on reality. Which has convinced me that it is harder to tell the story of what really happened, what it is actually based on true facts.

  As I reached the exit, the door on the left, the one I always take so I can go through the bookstore and see the music magazines and sometimes buy one, I saw her flipping through some fashion and dance magazines.

  I have to confess I'm not one to talk to strangers, neither men nor women, not in bus stations nor on buses. I like observing people, watching eyes, watching eyes that are looking, what they're looking at and getting lost, and create for each interesting woman or man an imaginary life and a fictional character, this one was born in January,
his parents divorced when he was seven, he was married twice, he doesn't like fish, this one has two children and hates all men, she lives frustrated. Sometimes I look blatantly at people and once I was staring at a man at Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv when he said "What are you looking at?" I was a little upset, but deep down I knew he was right, I have no right to go on the streets and transform anyone into a literary character. There are things that we just can't do.

  But this time I didn't hesitate one second to go up to her and ask her the first question that popped into my head. In my head now all I could hear was the music of William Ackerman, from the album “Conferring with the Moon”, with his guitars and flutes. It seemed like it was coming out of the speakers of the station although it only lived in my head. Something that often happens to me. It's been a while now, I've even been hearing entire symphonies that no one has written, I dream them.

  “Do you speak French?”

  “Oui.”

  The same voice. I'm still standing there.

  “Vous avez besoin de quelque chose?”

  And now what do I say? Do I keep speaking in Hebrew?

  “I just wanted to know if you spoke French.”

  “Well now you know, what a strange question, I thought you were going to ask me for directions, it's a common question in this place, which bus you have to take, something like that, but you never ask someone if they speak French just like that for the sake of it.”

  “Is your name Gabrielle?”

  Now she's the one with a puzzled face.

  “Do we know each other?”

  “Well, no, or yes, maybe. Thirty years, yes.”

  “But I'm only twenty-five.”

  “That's why I said yes and no, from before you were born, it's been many years... Hello, I'm...”

  “But how did you know my name?”

  “It's obvious, you have it written on your forehead, and I also know that you hate when they call you Gabriela here, it makes you very nervous.”

  She looked at me, trying to remember something, whether she knew me from somewhere, if I looked familiar, she was torn between leaving and staying, between taking me for a fool and continuing the conversation.

  “I'm not crazy, that's not it, or maybe I am, yes I am crazy, I don't know, but I feel like I know a lot about you.”

  “Like what, for example?” There was some hostility in her voice, just like Gabrielle, well, of course, like herself, she was just like herself. But mainly she showed curiosity.

  “You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny?” She asked, not very convinced. She even doubted whether there should be a question mark in the last sentence, perhaps there should be.

  “You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny...” Then she smiled. An amused smile, like Gabrielle's. Yes, sure, obviously, just like her own smile, the same smile as Gabrielle's.

  “Yes, that's exactly what I am, one of those maniacs who stalk people and then comes and tries to be funny...”

  I think it's best if we stopped repeating this sentence.

  Things have a way of being funny, I send myself an email to keep a backup of a file to my Gmail address. According to the dictionary, the word "back-up" is accepted in Spanish: backup of a file. In the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, the word doesn't even exist. Anyway, I sent it and when I received it back in my inbox I started wondering if it wasn't another advertisement for viagra or a pornographic page, because of the subject of the email: Gabrielle. French names always have a hint of eroticism and sex.

  “Do you want to get a coffee?”

  She looks at me, takes a glance at the fashion magazine, looks back at me.

  This is worthy of a novel. This, I am going to write. The music in my head changes to the song Moondance by Van Morrison, which seems the most vain that I could be listening to, so I change the station and I listen to Jimmy Lafave, singing Don't Walk Away Renée, a song that cuts up your guts. Come on, yes, say yes, say yes. Of course she'll say yes, if this is logical, if it has a narrative logic she has to say yes. The song changes, now it's Townes Van Zandt “If I needed you”, and he sings

  if I needed you

  would you come to me

  for to ease my pain

  What hurts? Nothing, but she is still eyeing her magazine, or there is a long parallel time that has nothing to do with my question and her answer. A time when I think very fast and I see ideas that take hours in a few seconds. Who can believe a story like that? They will all start saying it’s magical realism or metafiction, Cortazar or Millas or Auster or Roth, or all sorts of writers, how do I tell this to convince people? And maybe I should leave now and not let reality get mixed with fiction and invent everything, then, just then, she says:

  “Yes.”

  It is a friendly yes, I know it, but it's so different from the one my wife uses today that it seems weird, as if it was set in an unknown place in my mind. It is a friendly and well-known Yes, but at the same time it's strange.

  “Very well, in Aroma, I like the coffee they make,” she says.

  “Yes, and you like your espresso extra short and you hate lattes.”

  She looks back at me, she smiles, I can see that she starts liking this, she's intrigued.

  We go to the café and order at the register, a very short espresso for her.

  “Very very short,” she tells the waitress, and she specifies it again, “very very short.”

  “A macchiato for me, but decaffeinated.”

  “Seventeen shekels,” the waitress says.

  We sit in the inner room, without light or windows.

  “What else do you know about me?” she asks as she was sitting down.

  “Everything, more or less, grosso modo. I even know your future. For example, I knew that you were going to say yes,” I lie.

  “Yes to what?”

  “To get a coffee.”

  “Yes,” she lies. “I also knew that you knew, that's why I waited so long to answer. But, I mean, what else do you know about my life?”

  “And you are not going to say: You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny...?”

  “No, I am not going to say: You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny...”

  “We should stop repeating that sentence.”

  “What sentence?”

  “You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny...”

  She looks at me and I look back, she smiles and I smile back.

  “I won't say it anymore,” she says.

  “You won't say what anymore?”

  “I won't say: You're one of those maniacs stalking people and then you come and try to be funny...”

  “Alright then, I'll tell you what I know, or some of it, not all at once, the future can come as a shock.”

  I just finished my coffee, people here don't sit for too long, they finish their drinks and leave the cafeteria, they're not one of those maniacs stalking people and then come and try to be funny. Something has changed. The music's changed. Mary Black, “No Frontiers, Heaven Knows No Frontiers...” a song written by Jimmy MacCarthy.

  “Let's begin. I hope I'm right. You came to Israel when you were twenty, on your birthday, in October.”

  She looks at me and opens her huge blue eyes, so huge that they almost dissolve the beauty of the color, but that's not what happens, it almost dissolves it but it stays on the border and her beauty remains, a bit like a Picasso, every angle of her face creates a different face, and yet keeps changing according to her mood. Now I see that she is excited, she likes this. It reminds me of how Gabrielle looked at me before realizing that being a writer was not just something romantic, but also a problem in the bank account. Then, she stopped looking at me in that way and began to see me as the husband who doesn't make enough money. Which, by the way, is true.

  “Which October day?” She a
sks.

  “The seventh.” Now all music that I hear is of Townes Van Zandt. “To live’s to fly. The game is only to lose, this is what he sings in my ear.”

  “Want to come over for tea and then you can tell me everything?” Unexpected question, although it shouldn't be this way.

  “Yes, sure.”

  It's 9 p.m. I have to go back home, what do I do?

  “But first I have to go to the bathroom.”

  I go to the bathroom, I call my wife from my cell and tell her that I'm staying the night at Rami's in Tel Aviv, then I call him and tell him about it. He doesn't believe me.

  “I'll explain later, it's not what you think, I don't think Gabrielle will call you, but just in case, tell her I was tired and I went to sleep, nothing else.”

  “I live close by, in Najlaot, we can walk there.”

  And right before leaving the station:

  “What do you do?”

  “I am a writer.”

  “How original.”

  Yes, I know that you've always dated artists, painters, poets, photographers, you are attracted by them, but I say nothing. Perhaps I shouldn't say too much. And let her ask a little.

  It's cold. A frozen Jerusalem night, at the end of fall, the start of winter. We go out toward the Mahane Yehuda market, and on our way I suggest that we buy a bottle of wine in one of the kiosks on Yaffo Street a little further down the road. We take a few steps and I buy a bottle of Segal's Merlot. “And a snack,” she says. “Chips.” The bottle of wine costs me fifty-six shekels, more than double what it would have cost me in the supermarket near my house. Yes, I think about such nonsense when something is finally happening in my life. The chips cost me seven shekels, for that price I could get eight at the supermarket. On our way to her house, Gabrielle says that she wants me to one day read her one of my stories.

  “I don't write short stories, novels, short novels or a little longer ones.”

  “Alright, we'll meet one day and you'll read a short one to me.”

  “The shortest,” I say.