Sun and Beauty

Yossi Shemesh was an artist.
He was the happiest man in the world when he worked on his creations. And his creations were the most grateful ones in the world.
Yossi was capable of making up a new life, paint a new destiny and conjure up a new happiness.
“Shemesh” means “sun”. And no one even called him by his first name, everybody just referred to him as “Shemesh sheli”, “my sun”…

Yossi Shemesh was a women hairstylist. He was a master, a creator, a maestro.
Women were fighting to get to Yossi, it was a great joy and an unbelievable luck, and some waited for their appointment for several months. And every single one of them was desperately in love with him.
With his ginger eyes, his gap-toothed smile, his soft voice – and his magic hands.
Yossi worked with each woman only once. Only once he created his mysterious incomprehensible art.

And each woman’s life has changed. And each one found what she was looking for. Moreover, they found what their soul craved – and not what she thought she needed. Some were surprised and complained, but after a short period of time the complaints died down, and the woman would blossom, she started smiling like a morning flower, and happiness was dancing above her head like a balloon.
And Yossi’s line grew longer.
Magical master regretted just one thing – there are so many women and so little of me, he would say with a sigh, and happiness is something everybody wants.
And he was working from the first ray of Sun till the glorious Moon.
And there wasn’t a man in the world happier than him.

He saw her accidentally, while taking a wrong turn at his walk and getting lost in the area he grew up in.

Maybe her desperate cry lead him through space and time, maybe a sad angel just felt sorry for her in her misfortune – but he found her in some shrubs, neglected and dying. Oh, you poor thing, he said in astonishment, and stroke her headlight carefully. She was staring far in front of her, still proud and unbroken.
Beautiful, he whispered, you are so beautiful…
A 1967 Chevy Impala, born to concur, is standing here in a tall grass up to her knees, with flat tires and peeled flanks, rusty and lonely, – he mumbled circling her and touching lightly with his long fingers – as if he was tuning strings.
So what should I do with you, he sighed, squatting and mournfully examining her pierced bumper.

She kept quiet, she was too independent for humiliating herself and begging, she still remembered what it’s like – to fly faster than the wind and wallow in admiration. When you are the coolest ride on the road. When you shine from headlights to the polished exhaust. When you are a symbol of beauty and success. And this is forever.
Yossi straightened up, the sunset shining in his eyes and reflected in tarnished chrome of the former beauty.
Everybody needs happiness, Yossi thought; every woman needs her own happiness. Especially if this woman is a gorgeous Impala, and especially if she’s from the 67. And she definitely needs it if she was betrayed and dumped by the one who loved her. I should know, Yossi thought.

The master caught a wave, the inspiration carried him right into the sunset without touching the ground.
And just like that, straight out of the sunset, he burst to the best auto mechanic in town (and maybe even in the entire country), and poor Shani Goldberg had no idea that his peaceful life has come to an end, for at least four months.

How they found the parts, how they were looking for paint that wouldn’t insult the noble tint with a fake, how they turned the internet upside down but found the right leather for the interior, of that very color of night sky in May… and the restoration of a steering wheel deserved its own saga in twenty eight chapters!
And Shani Goldberg, a respectful father of four daughters (God bless them) cried like a baby when Yossi Shemesh carefully and tenderly took the reborn Impala out of the workshop into the sunlit courtyard.

“Behold, thou art fail, my love; behold, thou art fair!” – Yossi recited in his head, wheeling out to the highway. She was glowing – not in the way shiny silly young cars do, those built in two hours on an assembly line and disappearing into oblivion in two years – no, her glow was soft, noble and elegant.
Her garments were the color of dusk, her the headlights were silvery with a moon glare, and the softest leather of the seats languidly lure you in, the color of night sky in the mid May, when the violet darkness merges with the blue one, and somewhere underneath a setting sun still winks and adds some purple, and all the chrome-plated parts don’t shine like the gold teeth – no, they were shimmering velvety with the most elegant hand polish, and she was the most beautiful Machine on the road.
Every woman deserves happiness, Yossi Shemesh nicknamed Sun sang, caressing the steering wheel made of noble redwood – Every! Woman! Deserves! Happinee-ess!!!
And the beautiful Impala joined in with her engine bass, and happiness stringed behind her like a bunch of balloons, and everything was just fine!

Translated by Diana Shnaiderman-Pereira