Wednesday, May 6, 2020

My phone buzzes as I reach the end of the pedestrian street. It’s a message from the postal system. A package has arrived for me. The neighborhood pickup point is a small grocery store a block ahead of me. I head over. I am so close to the store when the notification arrives that the shopkeeper is still unloading the same box of packages when I walk in. He’s at a table in the back. I tell him that I have a package waiting and give him the notification code. He pulls it out of the box and asks me for my government ID number. He tells me to sign on the screen with my finger. I do. He hands me the package. His facial expression never changes. It seems to be permanently stuck at a setting halfway between deadpan and grumpy. I glance about to see if I want to buy anything. I don’t. I wonder once again how having the mail drop in his store works financially. Does the post office pay him for doing it? Does he have it in hopes that customers will buy things at the store? I haven’t asked him. I don’t have the Hebrew vocabulary for it, and he doesn’t seem interested in conversation. The package, as usual, contains a book. I had forgotten that I had ordered it from a site in England about a month ago. Apparently the virus hasn’t made the postal system any slower. I put the book in my shoulder bag. It barely fits. The last two books that I had ordered are still in there, unread. I tell myself that I’ll get to them sometime. Maybe I will.