A.B. Yehoshua explores aging in new book with humor and humanity
Through Zvi’s story and his work history we also see Israel as it has changed, developed and aged since the Six Day War.
By WENDY BLUMFIELDA. B. Yehoshua, a popular novelist, essayist and playwright, has been called ‘the Israeli Faulkner’ by ‘The New York Times.’(photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)A book about an aging road engineer diagnosed with early dementia may not seem like happy reading while we are bombarded daily with news of sickness and death. But I trusted A.B. Yehoshua, who is now 84, to give me a well-written work with his usual humor and humanity, titled The Tunnel.Zvi Luria is a retired senior engineer who worked all his adult life for the Israel Roads Authority. He is still a legend among his former colleagues, but regrets that he cannot remember first names and there are other gaps in his memory. His wife, Dina, a pediatrician, is still working and they are both shocked when given the diagnosis. But the neurologist is upbeat. “You can slow this down by being active mentally and physically – and having sex with your wife.”At a retirement party for the Roads Authority director, he meets Maimon, a young engineer who has been commissioned to plan a secret road near the Ramon Crater. They agree that with Zvi’s immense experience he could work as Maimon’s assistant, albeit unpaid.So begins an adventure of trips down to the Negev, where he immediately advises Maimon that the road is in the wrong location. But the main obstruction is a hill on the proposed route. Zvi asks why it cannot be flattened and he is told that a senior army official had allowed a family of Palestinians without identity papers to live hidden on the hill as he had misled them into selling land illegally in their own village.This results in the plans for a tunnel that would leave the hill intact, and Zvi and Maimon now need to convince the directors and finance committee of the necessity of the tunnel while avoiding the background story.There is a deepening relationship between the engineers and the refugees, highlighting some of the political conflicts between the two peoples but showing how reasonable empathic people can work out solutions for each other.Zvi is still leading a normal life, driving his car with confidence. But on several occasions he forgets the ignition code so he gets it tattooed onto his arm. He does forget his address sometimes, and when he loses his phone, his son buys him two so that he can always be in contact.During the interval at a concert, he is confused when trying to find his wife and their seat and ends up on the stage, where kindly stage-hands lead him to the wings where he watches the entire second half of one of his favorite pieces.In spite of his increasing memory loss, he is capable of making important decisions. When his wife comes home with a serious virus she had picked up from a child in her hospital, he takes charge, caring for her tenderly and gets her to the hospital when her illness becomes more serious.
The neurologist’s advice to have sex with his wife has kindled a new desire for her and indeed he finds that he gets turned on by other attractive young women.Some of the story touches on the bizarre but Yehoshua tells such a human story, injects a lot of humor into what is not a funny health issue and his use of language is excellent as usual. The translation is superb.Through Zvi’s story and his work history we also see Israel as it has changed, developed and aged since the Six Day War.■The TunnelA.B Yehoshua (Translated by Stuart Schoffman)Halban Publishers 2020320 pages; NIS 82
