In Tel Aviv, just before I boarded the bus to Beersheba, I bought the ice cream.
Since the ice cream was for her, of course it made no sense to buy it so long before I was going to see her. It would have made more sense to buy it there, in Beersheba, just before I saw her.
But the reason I bought the ice cream in Tel Aviv was that I loved her. It was one of those loves—the kind that will not let you hold back, the kind that makes you do things ordinary people do not do.
Like buying ice cream two hours before seeing her.
People without love do not buy ice cream two hours before they mean to give it away. They know perfectly well that it will melt in their hands. People in love, on the other hand—people like me—see ice cream and immediately think of their girlfriends. They know the ice cream will not let them down. Not now. Not when they are so much in love. Their ice cream never melts.
It is true.
I was standing on the platform with the ice cream when the bus to Beersheba arrived. I got on and sat beside the driver. Ice cream in one hand.
The driver in the driver’s seat was fat. Really fat. As fat as people get when they are really fat. He watched me in the mirror as I sat down close to him with the ice cream. Perhaps he thought I was trying to annoy him, sitting there in front of him with a cup full of ice cream and not taking a single lick. He smiled into the mirror, and it seemed to me that he was trying to hide his pent-up anger, his craving for ice cream.
The passengers bound for Beersheba boarded the bus. They sat down one by one, and when most of the seats had acquired heads, the fat driver released the brakes and the bus set off for Beersheba.
I looked into the fat driver’s mirror and saw him studying me in return. His lips moved slightly. He meant to say something, and eventually he did.
“So, you’ve got ice cream and you’re not eating it?”
“The ice cream is for my new girlfriend.”
“You have a new girlfriend?”
“Brand-new,” I said.
The fat driver shifted around in his seat, trying to get comfortable.
“Nice, nice,” he said. A moment later he added, “I know how it is. Makes you want to do all kinds of crazy things, huh?”
I said nothing, so he went on.
“Well, we’ve got a long ride ahead of us,” he said. “All the way to Beersheba.”
When I still said nothing, he said, “Hot today, isn’t it?” He glanced at me, then at the ice cream.
“I had a new girlfriend once,” he said. “A long time ago, I admit, but I still remember her as if she got on the bus two stops back. She was as beautiful as the girls on television. Long hair, light-colored eyes, you know. Her name was Dalia.”
I turned and looked out my window. I could feel the fat driver watching me in his mirror. His new girlfriend interested me only slightly.
“You remember her, Yuri?” he said to an older man with ginger-colored hair who was sitting in the seat behind him.
“Dalia?” Yuri said. “Of course I remember.”
“This is Yuri,” the fat driver said, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “He rides with me to Beersheba every day and goes back in the evening. He has nothing to do at home.”
Yuri laughed, revealing two front teeth that were not there.
“No wife,” he said. “No children, no work. What’s left? Ride to Beersheba. Go, come back.”
“So, Yuri, tell him about Dalia. Wasn’t she something?”
“Dalia was something special,” Yuri said. “She was very special.”
“She had long brown hair and blue eyes, didn’t she?” said a woman’s voice from the seat behind me.
“Huh?” the fat driver said, looking in the mirror for the owner of the voice.
“I remember seeing her sitting beside you. She was your girlfriend?” the woman said.
“She certainly was. She used to sit right here beside me, and we would talk. Those were the days. I used to reach Beersheba in half the time. Mine was the only bus in the company that made it from Tel Aviv to Beersheba in thirty-five minutes. Thirty-five minutes. People would come especially to ride with me. They would ask Yaakov, the dispatcher, when Ben-Zion’s bus to Beersheba was leaving.”
“Well, that’s how it is,” Yuri said. “Have girlfriend, have life.”
“Thirty-five minutes,” the driver repeated.
“I remember,” said the woman’s voice behind me.
A moment later, the woman’s voice said, “And your new girlfriend—what is she like? Is she interesting?”
There was silence. Only when the driver looked at me in the mirror did I realize that the voice was addressing me. My heart warmed in an instant.
“Are you asking if my girlfriend is interesting?” I said. “Of course she’s interesting. I think about her all day.”
A man in a green suit who was sitting beside Yuri shifted uneasily in his seat. He held a large newspaper in his hands and stared into it.
“How can you not think about a new girlfriend all day?” he said. “You have a girlfriend, you think about her all day.”
The fat driver looked in the mirror and said, “And who says he doesn’t think about her at night?”
Several voices joined in one rolling laugh.
“Well, are you going to tell us about her or not?” the driver asked.
I smiled to myself. “Her name is Sheila,” I said.
“Shei-la,” said the man in the green suit beside Yuri. He stared into the broad pages of his newspaper and read from them as though the words were printed there: “Sheila is a beautiful name.”
“My landlady’s name is Sheila,” said the woman’s voice behind me. “And she is very nice. Very, very nice. Not like—”
The woman’s voice stopped.
“I say gentleman passenger should now show us picture how Sheila looks,” Yuri said. Whenever Yuri smiled, his two missing teeth reappeared. After saying this, he motioned forward with his hand, encouraging the others to ask for a picture too.
“Well, do you have a picture of your girlfriend?” the driver asked. He was fat even inside his large seat. The system of springs beneath it had died.
I nodded. I had not intended to show Sheila’s picture to anyone, but it was in my shirt pocket, and I did not mind taking it out, if only because I wanted to be reminded of her myself. I took out the picture with my free hand, careful not to drop the ice cream in the other.
I looked at it for a while. After a few moments, a smile I had not invited began gathering at the corners of my mouth, slowly stretching them in a pleasant way. Then I held the photograph out across the aisle to Yuri.
Yuri took the photograph in both hands and, after a moment, passed it to the man in the green suit, who sat beside him with his newspaper. The man placed the photograph inside the newspaper and studied it as though it were part of an article he was reading. A moment later, he handed it back to Yuri, who looked at it once more.
The bus grew quiet. The wind stopped making noise through the open windows, and even the engine fell silent. We traveled as if in a dream as Yuri passed the photograph to the fat driver. The driver held it in front of him and drove without looking at the road. Then he looked at the road again, and then once again he did not. He went on like this until he suddenly broke the silence and said, “Psssh.”
The wind began making noise again, and so did the engine and the dead springs beneath the fat driver’s seat. Everything made noise again.
“Girl like that does not come along every day,” Yuri said. “That is once in a lifetime.”
The man in the green suit read aloud from the newspaper’s headline: “This Sheila is something wonderful.”
The fat driver handed the photograph back to me, and I returned it to my shirt pocket. I was glad when it was safely inside my pocket again. Somehow, I felt better with it there.
The voice behind me said, “I still haven’t seen her, but I imagine your new girlfriend is very pretty. I’m a little jealous, you know?”
I said nothing.
“I was someone’s new girlfriend once too,” the woman’s voice said.
I looked at the road. I counted the power poles beside the highway. I reached one hundred. Soon, I thought, I would see her.
The air conditioning on the bus could barely be felt, yet the ice cream stood beautifully in the heat. Not a single drop ran down.
The fat driver stole another glance at the ice cream in my hand.
I imagined how I would offer it to her.
“Yavne on the left,” the fat driver said.
I was a little surprised, because I did not remember drivers from that company being in the habit of explaining the route.
I sent him a look through the mirror, and he returned one of his own. Without saying anything, he told me that, all things considered, he was in a good mood, and so he could explain the route.
Yuri began humming something that sounded like an old Russian melody.
The man in the green suit read in his newspaper that people with new girlfriends were the happiest people in the whole world. Perhaps even happier than that.
“Of course,” the driver said. “Take me, for example. When I met Dalia—”
The fat driver brought his foot down on the gas pedal, and the bus accelerated.
The man in the green suit closed his newspaper for a moment, folded it across his knees and looked at me. His eyes were green, the same color as his suit.
“So you’re happy, huh?” he said.
I gave him another of those broad smiles, my lips stretching until I felt a little foolish.
Yuri nudged the man in the suit with his arm and said, “How can he not be happy? Of course happy. You ever see picture like that and not be happy?”
Yuri turned to me. “Can see picture?”
I looked at him. I wanted to tell him with my eyes that only a moment earlier her picture had passed between him and his friends. But instead of telling him with my eyes, I simply took the photograph from my pocket and handed it to Yuri again.
Yuri took the picture and looked at it in a rather strange way. He closed one eye and examined it closely.
“This is very good,” he said. “This is very good.”
He handed the picture to the man in the suit. I waited for the man to tell Yuri that he had seen it only a moment ago. But the man in the green suit, whose eyes were the same color as his suit, merely took the photograph, placed it between the pages of his newspaper and read from somewhere inside it:
“Young people have all kinds of things that make them feel good.”
“Look at him,” the driver said, watching me in the mirror. “He bought her that ice cream.”
“My boyfriend used to buy me ice cream,” said the voice behind me. “And many other nice things too. Whenever we met, he would bring me something.”
“But his ice cream—look at it,” the driver continued. “He’s been holding it in his hand all the way from Tel Aviv, and I swear to you, I’ve been watching it in this mirror for twenty minutes, and not a single drop has run down.”
“In Russia, all ice cream was like that,” Yuri said.
“But this isn’t Russia,” the driver said.
For a moment, there was silence.
The woman’s voice behind me said, “It is beautiful, seeing how the ice cream does not drip. Clearly, there is a little miracle here. When people are in love, all kinds of miracles happen.”
The man in the green suit read aloud from his newspaper: “This is not a miracle. The air conditioning is working, and the ice cream is not melting. That is all there is to it.”
“Air conditioning? What air conditioning?” Yuri said. “Pay money for ride and can hardly breathe.”
The driver leaned toward one of the buttons on his dashboard and pretended to turn up the air conditioning.
“It will be cooler for you now,” he said.
I saw that he had not touched a single button.
The man in the green suit settled comfortably into his seat, enjoying the improved air conditioning.
“I still think it is a little miracle,” the woman’s voice returned.
“Miracle or no miracle,” the driver said, “the important thing is that the ice cream shouldn’t drip before Beersheba.”
He stepped on the gas again, and the bus raced forward.
“I’m meeting Sheila at six,” I said suddenly. I don’t know why I said it, but I did.
The driver said, “We’ll be in Beersheba by a quarter to six. If there aren’t any traffic jams, we’ll reach the central bus station a few minutes before six.”
“Exactly on time,” Yuri said. “I can already feel heart.”
“You can feel what?” I asked.
“The heart,” Yuri said. “It works very, very good.”
Yuri touched his heart, and I tried to understand why his heart needed to beat so quickly now.
The man in the suit looked at his watch, which had thick, gleaming glass, and read the time from it. Then he said, “In thirty minutes, it will be six.” It seemed to me that for a moment, he too felt his heart in his hand.
The driver pressed down harder on the gas pedal, and the bus raced along the road to Beersheba.
“On the right is a kibbutz. I don’t remember which one,” he said. “On the left, you can enjoy the open view. Look how beautiful the road to Beersheba is.”
Yuri and the man in the suit looked out the windows to the right and left as though they were tourists on the fat driver’s bus.
The woman’s voice said, “I can hardly wait to reach Beersheba. It will be wonderful. The ice cream—”
Then the driver said, “Beersheba ahead.”
The man in the suit said, “What?”
Yuri also said, “What?”
I thought of saying “What?” too, but I did not.
Suddenly there was Beersheba.
The fat driver looked a little confused himself. He did not know how to explain how we had arrived in Beersheba long before we were supposed to.
“I told you,” he said. “I told you. People used to line up to ride with Ben-Zion.”
We entered Beersheba, and the man in the green suit, who was sitting beside a window, took a white handkerchief from an inside pocket of his suit and began waving to the people in the streets.
Yuri waved his hand. By now he was loudly humming the Russian national anthem, or something that sounded like the Russian national anthem.
“Where did those twenty minutes go?” asked the woman’s voice behind me, and then answered itself. “It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle. It must be a miracle. First Yavne, then a kibbutz, and suddenly Beersheba.”
The fat driver drove very slowly as we entered the city. So slowly that after a while, the man in the green suit read the time from his oversized watch.
“Five minutes to six,” he said, then read another line from his newspaper: “If we do not reach the central bus station immediately, it will be a failure.”
He waved the newspaper’s front page at the driver.
“Time gets all mixed up,” the fat driver said. “I know how it is. Of course I do. When I was with Dalia, an hour was a moment and a moment was an hour. Is it five minutes to six already?”
He set the bus racing again, and a few moments later announced over the loudspeaker, “Central bus station.”
The woman’s voice behind me repeated the driver’s words as though they were part of a prayer.
“Central bus station,” the voice whispered.
Yuri looked at me with one hand resting on his heart and said nothing. His blue eyes shone in his pale face.
The man in the green suit closed his newspaper.
The bus stopped.
I looked through the driver’s large windshield and saw a sign: DISEMBARKING PLATFORM.
The bus door opened, and I waited for the passengers to begin getting off so that I could leave through the rear door with them and not be late for my meeting.
It was quiet again. I did not hear the passengers rise. No one picked up a suitcase or a parcel carried from Tel Aviv, or anything else. Strangely, they all remained seated.
I looked at the driver. He watched me through his mirror.
“Two minutes to six,” said the man in the green suit.
I stood and turned around.
The exit door was open.
The seats looked just as they had at the beginning of the ride. Almost every seat still had a head. I stepped down through the rear door and stood on the platform.
I began walking.
I looked back. No one followed me. There was only me and my thoughts.
And the ice cream.
I looked at the bus windows. The scene became strange.
The driver remained in his seat, and Yuri and the man in the suit joined him beside it. They talked among themselves and also to someone I could not see. They went on talking as several passengers began getting off through the rear door. They did not drag suitcases behind them or carry bags. They carried only themselves—heads that had acquired bodies—and arranged themselves in a line alongside the bus.
When the line was ready, I saw the fat driver stand, and the bus stood with him. The fat driver came down the steps at the front door. Yuri and the man in the green suit came down with him, along with one more figure who walked directly behind the green suit of the man in the green suit.
I looked at my ice cream and then at the large clock mounted on a post in the middle of the platform.
It was six.
The people lined up beside the bus remained frozen in place. The fat driver and the friends who had come down through the front door joined them but stood a little ahead of the line. The group now formed the shape of an arrow. The fat driver led them.
Actually, they were following now.
I walked toward the place where I had arranged to meet my new girlfriend. Some of my excitement gave way beneath the strangeness of the sight: there I was, walking, and behind me came a fat bus driver who had just stepped off the bus I had ridden, and behind him came all the passengers, walking slowly and silently.
It really was six.
Sheila stood there, in the place we had arranged, at the time we had arranged, with that look. She watched me while I still had twenty or thirty steps to take before I reached her. I took them as quickly as I could, careful not to let the steps turn into running, because I had often seen steps turn into running in the movies, and Sheila was from life.
I reached her. At six, I reached her.
She opened her arms, ready to receive me with an embrace or a kiss, and I stopped just one step in front of her, in the place where it is hardest to stop, in the place where it is impossible to stop, in the place where no one has ever managed to stop.
I raised the hand holding the ice cream. It trembled slightly, perhaps from excitement, as I offered the cup to her.
A single drop, which I could see from where I stood, began sliding down the side of the cup the moment Sheila took it in her hand.