Youth is a time with many and varied stories and never returns… ever. The foundation for the great salon society that was established over time was laid by a small handful of friends on Emek-Hazeitim Street in Haifa. Esther Sadovnik was my neighbor on the same floor but in the building next door. We would meet in the living room, start small talk until we gathered courage and started spinning a bottle. The game “Truth or Dare” opened with awkward questions of love, hate, but we were all waiting for the kisses. The bottle shows the kisser and the one who spins the bottle is the one who determines who gets kissed, where, how much and where. We are still at the age of life imprisonment, but… in most cases we were eight.
Esther, Edna Wurzel, Miri Lernelit and Gabriella and the boys Israel Tamari, Shimon Reichstadt, Menachem Lorber and myself. Over time, we began to skip the small talk and started straight away with the bottle game. At a more advanced stage, we began to skip the awkward questions and moved straight to kissing. The kiss was upgraded from salt to lips. This is how we began to feel adulthood knocking on the door. We also received reinforcement and confidence for other everyday matters. January 1955. Egypt executed Dr. Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Ezer on charges of spying for Israel. Five captured soldiers are in the Syrian prison. One of them, Uri Ilan, committed suicide and on a note found in his clothes he wrote: "I did not betray." His name is a combination of my father's first name and mine. In faraway America, legendary saxophone player Charlie "Bird" Parker died. He was thirty-five years old when he died. Despite his lifestyle as a hard drug addict, he managed to create a school of music in his short life that many imitate to this day. There has never been another like him.
I am preoccupied with the problems of adolescence and the news flies past my ears. I hear and do not ignore. Today, in retrospect, these events take on a different meaning. After eight years of studying at the "Hogim" school in Hadar, on Pevzner Street, I go to study at "Hogim" on the Carmel. Next to the "Elisha" hospital and the "Beit Blumenthal" mental institution. In front of the school fence stood a small shack that served as a kiosk with everything. Sandwiches, drinks and office supplies. Behind the shack is a dense grove of pine trees.
On one side, the grove borders the Blumenthal House, and in front of it, the entire bay, the harbor, and the Jezreel Valley can be seen. There were times when we would notice a figure in one of the small windows and hear terrible, inhuman screams that would suddenly stop as suddenly as they had begun. The Technion compound in Hadar, which reached Masada Street, contained a vocational school and an asphalt-paved basketball court. In the afternoons, when school was on holiday, we would gather on the court for heated basketball games. The games would last long after sunset, and then the arguments would increase. In a phase of complete darkness, we would run to the water fountain, something we didn't dare do in the middle of the game, and each of us would cling to the faucet for long seconds and sip water in commercial quantities. There were no drink breaks during the game so as not to lose precious time. No drinks, no restrooms, no fatigue, and no pain.
The game begins and continues until it ends. A low concrete fence was next to the fountain. From it, at a depth of over ten meters, our jumping garden is visible. 'Natan Garden' which begins on Castle Street and ends on Masada Street. At the end of the garden is a building, the ground floor of which contains a small hall and offices of the Merchant Navy Sailors' Club. The garden is dotted with benches that are used during the day by mothers who want to feed their offspring in the open air, among the trees, and in the evening by couples looking for a place to cuddle and kiss away from prying eyes.
We finished a basketball game, emptied the water of the Sea of Galilee into our bellies. Now, by the light of the moon shining through the tree branches, we looked for couples and flirted. There were cases when a reckless couple dared to take off their upper clothing, because of the heat outside, or because of the heat inside. None of the couples thought that instead of God watching from above, they were being watched by a group of sweaty boys, who had finished a stormy game, and who were glancing down, hoping to see some piece of wood shining in the moonlight, from a height of ten meters. What are men capable of doing to catch a glimpse of an almost shining piece of wood.
I left the group in silence, not that my interest had stopped, I simply changed the subject and walked along the fence and arrived in front of the sailors' club where an event was taking place. A party or a wedding and the "La Macarena" orchestra was playing while the vocalist Motka Segal, who is not related to me, played the alto saxophone. Later we became friends, each with his own orchestra. The requested song and played several times in the evening is of course the tune "The Virgin from La Macarena" by the Cuban Perez Prado, and it is also the ringtone on my cell phone to this day. When I played the tune that was so famous, the friends fell silent.
Based on the jubilation of the friends, I understand that they experienced some unusual event, or that they threw a stone at a couple who was not active to their liking, thus forcing them to give up the bench to a more mature couple, whose passions would allow for more daring displays.
The moon's waning light among the clouds, illuminating the glimmer of a piece of wood, will make a boy's mind dance.
