You Won’t Believe This

Below is the fifth segment of a new short story—’You Won’t Believe This’—never before published. As I say at its beginning, I’m telling you this incredible story to: “Test your core belief in the divine, or your firm conviction in reality and reason.” Enjoy the ride.

In a personal act of defiance and protest—probably my last such act—I tuned instead to the “Voice of Peace,” Abie Nathan’s radio station, which he operated in those days from a boat out in the sea. It faithfully transmitted, at all hours of the day and night, golden oldies and classic rock, mixed with messages of peace, directly through the air and over the waves of the sea at the window of my bedroom, and at the balcony of my apartment.

Next, I glanced in dread at my writing desk, situated strategically in a shaded corner of the room. On top of the desk, beside my green Hermes typewriter, rested my latest screenplay: Love under the Eucalyptus Tree. (You may laugh, why don’t you, I’m laughing too.) The one about the kibbutz, where my father, good health may always be with him, still lived. He deserves a call, too, I was thinking, and a mention in my final writing paper as well. After all, this screenplay was in large part about him: A Holocaust survivor, a socialist, an eternal idealist and dreamer. A curse and affliction I no doubt inherited from him. No wonder I turned out so screwed up.

True to form, and to that conclusion, I was planning on directing the film myself. It was supposed to be my film, you see, my singular work of art. I would finally create a splash here in the city, and make a name for myself to go along with it. Would rescue my future, hopefully, from the jaws of my past. Would prove to all those city-type people that I, a farm-boy from the Jezreel Valley, was capable of more than just these lousy video magazines. Even though, cut to the naked truth here, the copies I’d made so far of my screenplay, with considerable costs (money originally set aside for my monthly rent), kept coming back to me from those pretentious, brainless producers, and their fake production companies. Always rejected.

Rejected and dejected was how I felt that afternoon. I couldn’t go through another rewrite. No way. Even that, sitting at my desk writing—the one thing I liked doing the most—was too much for me on that ominous, albeit sunny day in Tel Aviv. Instead, I put my hand on the phone, resting on the broken, small black & white television set, intending on calling my son. See how he was doing. Yet I hesitated, my phone anxiety taking over big time, as I realized I would probably have to speak with her first. His mother. My wife still, officially. It was the worst, talking to her. I just couldn’t bring myself into doing that. Not now—not ever.

I opened the two sliding glass doors that separated my living room from the balcony, parted them wide and stepped outside. I placed my cold lemonade glass on the small round table, standing by my old beach chair, and raised the dusty green shades all the way up. It was like raising a curtain, as they used to do back then at the old, grand Tel Aviv Cinema Theater in town, before the screening of each film. Let it begin; I was ready for the end.