Free Motti by Asaf Schurr

with them.—But hasn’t this trust also proved itself? So far as I can judge—yes.
    â€”Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty

32
    Like many others, at first Menachem loved his father because of who he thought he was, then hated him because of who he actually was, ultimately went back and loved him, this time because of who he tried to be.
    No one knew, but in the back of one of the drawers in the big writing desk, the very same desk he hid under as a boy, his father found him there, excited and amazed with his discovery time after time, gathered him up in his arms and flew him around and around in the room, and announced, Rachel look what I found, Rachel look what I found, and Menachem laughed and got excited, and always waited there to be gathered up like that, to be discovered by surprise and gathered up like that, and once his father travelled someplace else, wasn’t at home three whole days, and on the morning of the second day Menachem hid there again, under the writing desk, and waited and waited, it seemed to him then like eternity but certainly wasn’t more than twenty minutes, and in the end his mother, Rachel, found him there, and spoke to him softly and invited him to eat the eggs that were cold already after more than twenty minutes of waiting on the breakfast table, and she didn’t understand why he was so sad and disagreeable, but that was only one time, almost all the other times his dad found him and flew him around and around, but in any case, in the back of one of these drawers in that desk he’d hidden a small box with all the letters he ever received from his father, postcards from abroad and letters from when he was away on reserve service, cards with birthday wishes and other scraps of paper. No one knew. Not even Edna. How did she never find the box? Who knows. In any case she didn’t find it.
    And this evening he didn’t look through it. He sat next to the writing desk and stared into space. When Edna came into the room, he jumped slightly.
    Everything okay?
    Perfectly okay, said Menachem.
    The children are already at the table, she said. You’re not coming to eat?
    Just a second, honey, said Menachem.
    Something bothering you?
    No, not at all, answered Menachem. I’m thinking about Motti, you know. What’s he doing there, how it is in prison.
    Give him a call, suggested Edna, who was a practical woman, even though she was still really shocked by the trial and everything having to do with it. Write a letter. Tell him, I dunno. That he’s your friend, that you’ll help him get set up when he gets out, that he should hang on and stuff. Things like that.
    Forget it, said Menachem. I don’t like all that…all that…
    Sentimentality? offered Edna.
    Yes, said Menachem. All that sentimentality.
    After she left the room he did in fact open the drawer and look at the tattered treasures hidden inside. Sat without moving and looked at them for a long time, as if trying to set them on fire with his eyes. For quite some time no postcard has been added. A longing consumes him.

33
    â€œIn short,” Guard B says this time to Guard A as they stroll down the corridor with a light step, their bodies free like the land of our fathers, on their way to pass by the door to Motti’s cell—actually, from their perspective, on their way to the staff dining hall, but from the perspective of this story the door to Motti’s cell is what’s important, even though they don’t care one bit that this is his cell door, and as they pass by it they don’t give it so much as a glance, “in short, this Mahabuta Banana, whatever they called him” (says Guard B, as if he’s being dismissive, though actually he’s not being dismissive, that’s just his way of speaking, these days), “among ourselves we always called him Jimbo and that’s all, black as the night he was, maybe his name was Mabruto, go figure, you know what