A Walk in the Park / Yifat Golan Arav

We are both walking along the path in the park. We only come to the park on weekday mornings, when there are fewer people. You don’t like crowds; they’re too hectic and everyone stares. We walk very slowly along the path. You always walk in front, and I follow behind. I have to walk very slowly so that you stay in the lead. I want to stay behind you—that way I can watch out for you, make sure you’re okay, and caress your back with my eyes, without touching. You don’t like to be touched.

I walk upright, my head held high, the sun in my face. You walk in front of me, slightly hunched over. Your left leg—the good one—steps forward and settles. Then your right leg drags along. And again your left leg steps forward, settles on the ground, and drags your right leg along. I’m wearing a pink sweater; pink suits my skin tone. You’re wearing a striped shirt I bought for you in a sale, three for the price of one, all of them striped. You like stripes. On your bad days, you won’t wear anything else. If there isn’t a clean striped shirt, you scream and bang your head on the wall until a striped shirt is found, or until your head bleeds, or until evening falls and we go to sleep and a new day begins, a better day for you.

We sit on a bench opposite the climbing wall. I sit upright. You sit slightly hunched, extending your right leg at an angle to get comfortable. You say, “Bread.”

Bread can mean lots of things. It can mean actual bread, or food in general, or that you’re tired, or that you need to pee or jerk off. By now, I can tell what you mean from the context and your tone of voice. I take an apple out of my bag, peeled and cut into eight pieces, and offer you a piece. When you finish it, you’ll get another. So you don’t eat it all at once. We watch in silence as a man climbs the wall and hangs for an instant, suspended between earth and sky. He climbs slowly, extends his left arm to the hook, settles, and drags along the rest of his body.

A little girl skips by the bench, about five, with a ponytail and a pink plastic bag swinging coquettishly on her shoulder. She stops in front of you and looks. You look back at her. You extend your hand with the apple in it and say, “Bread.” The girl takes the apple from you and says, “No, it’s not bread! It’s an apple!” “Bread,” you retort, and she repeats, “A-pple.” I’m about to intervene and explain, but then she opens her pink plastic bag and takes out a chocolate sandwich, a slice of bread with chocolate spread, folded along its center. Chocolate inside, bread outside. She shows it to you and says, “That’s bread.” You snatch the sandwich out of her hand and stuff it all in your mouth in one go, so that no-one can take it from you. I look at the girl’s face, waiting for her to start crying, drafting apologies in my mind. But the girl smiles, “Tastes good, doesn’t it?” she asks you. You don’t reply. Your mouth’s full of bread. “Amalia!” her mother calls, and the girl waves in reply and skips away from us with balanced paces, her pink plastic bag tapping against her back.

I watch you sitting there, hunched over, your mouth full of the chocolate sandwich, which you chew slowly. Your thick glasses slip down your nose. A few white hairs show at your temples. I know you can feel me even though you aren’t looking at me. I want to hug you, or at least stroke your head, but I can’t. You don’t like to be touched.

“Bread,” you say. We get up and start to walk. You walk in front and I follow behind. Slowly. Your left leg steps forward and settles, then your right leg drags along.

English translation: Shaul Vardi

The story won first prize in the 2024 Haaretz newspaper short story competition.

Yifat Golan Arav: yifatparis@gmail.com