Husband and Wife

by Zeruya Shalev

  When I wake up the room is dark and stuffy, full of crude smells of frying, which push out the cool spring air, next to me I find a greasy plate, and I recoil as if from a living creature, my mother used to say that if you wake up after sunset you won’t smile for the rest of the day, and it seems that she was right, and I look at the big bed, at us, a sour, drunken family asleep in the middle of the day, and the celebration I tried to organize here hits me like a slap on the face, what’s there to celebrate, it was bad enough before, never mind now. The feverish desire, which hasn’t left me since yesterday morning, to get back to our normal routine, to huddle inside it like a dog in its kennel on a rainy night, suddenly seems fatuous, who needs that old life back?

  And then I see that my side of the bed is empty, Noga’s gone, and I rush into her dark room, she isn’t there, or anywhere in the house, where a dim black light prevails, and then I find a torn piece of paper on the kitchen table, I’ve gone to Granny’s, she writes in her clumsy hand, I’m going to sleep there tonight, I took my book bag with me, and I’m astonished, how come she left of her own free will, my housebound little girl, who barely agrees to go to any extracurricular activities, who sits at home all day like a watchdog, it can’t be an accident that she’s gone, and I think of her in sorrow and shame, a little girl with a big role that fills her life, to stick the broken vase together, that’s what she’s been trying to do for the past eight years, and the bigger she grows the bigger the role grows with her, subjugating her childhood, conquering her life.

  Heavy snores rise from the bedroom, aggressive as a reprimand, and I return rebuked, stretch my hand out to him, always at the initiation of contact an ancient aversion awakens, preceding everything that will come afterward, the lust or the desire, a pair of merry twins trying to overcome it with a vigorous rubbing of limbs, and sometimes it slinks away, its tail between its legs, and desire celebrates its victory, warm and ardent, and sometimes the desire is vanquished, it seems to flare up, but no, it soon dies down again, how hard it is to light a fire with damp twigs, and all that remains is a faint smell of good intentions that didn’t succeed. This was how we lay on my narrow childhood bed, his boy’s hands seeking treasures in my body while I hear my father’s steps in his rubber clogs, going back and forth, his loneliness echoing throughout the house, and a wave of aversion chokes me until I almost vomit. I sit up in bed and push his fingers away, it’s impossible, Udi, how can I enjoy myself when he’s so unhappy, but Udi refuses to give up, his limbs thrust themselves on me, his unambiguous will tries to overcome the aversion, and for a moment he seems to succeed, and it hides from him in the depths of my throat, even his long tongue won’t find it there, and I surrender, opening door after door to him, pockets of sweetness burst under his hands, but in the morning I wake up with an inflamed throat, it hurts too much to swallow, and my fever rises, and my father calls my mother, she’s sick again, she’s got laryngitis again, and then they move me, with my sickness, my pajamas and my blanket, from house to house, so little Yotam won’t be infected, he’s a sickly child at the best of times, and Udi comes to see me after school, squeezing into my sweltering bed, and I mumble, not now, leave me alone, I’m sick, and he goes away offended, without saying good-bye, and I hear the shuffle of the clogs all over the house and I torment myself, is that what you wish yourself, to live in such loneliness, that’s what will happen to you if you chase him away.

  Sour alcohol fumes breathe on me from his open mouth, and I press myself against him under the blanket, putting his sleeping arm round my shoulders in the illusion of an embrace, try to stroke his body, to awaken desire. How does it awaken, where does it come from, sometimes a single word can quicken it, a provocative smile, but like this, when the body is alone, without any extras, only the still limbs and their mysterious, embarrassing disease, how will it come, but this time I refuse to surrender, I have to try to heal him by the ancient method, Lot’s daughters too weren’t exactly wild about their drunken old father, in the cave on the mountain, above Zoar, after all the cities of the plain had been destroyed, and nevertheless they made him drink wine and lay with him in order to preserve the seed of their father and he perceived not when they lay down nor when they arose. I lay my hand on his sleeping penis and instantly it stretches and wakes up like a curious baby who doesn’t want to miss anything, and I bend over it in sudden delight, here’s the only limb in his body that hasn’t changed, agile and friendly, I can always depend on it, a faithful ally in a country that has turned its back on me, I never imagined that I would feel so close to it, it seems as if it belongs to me, almost a part of me, and I sit down gently on his belly as flat as a board, and sway from side to side. Here it comes, precisely when I’ve given up on it, as if it’s rising from a deep well, in a swaying bucket, the thick, viscid desire, and I clamp his body between my thighs, no longer caring if he wakes from his tipsy sleep, bending over him, my breasts pouring into his open mouth, and he licks them with his tongue, digs his teeth into the nipples, binds me to him with a cord of pain, sucking all my body into his mouth, my tired, prematurely worn-out body, baking afresh now in the oven of his mouth, and soon it will emerge as fresh and fragrant as a roll, and without any effort or intention on my part, the bucket that has just been drawn up from the well pours over me, lapping me in warm, delicious juices. And now it plunges back into the well, creaking as it blindly makes its way down, its movements are my movements, passive, random, and another cloud pours down, a cloudburst over my head, and I remember the old well at the end of our village, in the heart of the thick mango and avocado plantations, where my feet sank into the soft blanket of leaves, dry on top and wet below, mattresses of leaves leading to it, and suddenly somebody shouts, get away from that well, a small child once fell into it, the water drowned his cries, the only child of elderly parents, and I twist and turn, I don’t want this water, it’s cursed, but the bucket doesn’t stop, it rises and falls inside me, with movements that grow bigger and bigger until my ears fill with gurgling, carefree laughter.

  You’re taking advantage of my condition, he complains in a gratified voice, opening his eyes, and I pant on top of him, and bury my giddy head in his armpit. You couldn’t wait until I woke up, he goes on, making me drink wine and raping me in my sleep, you’re so famished, where have you been hiding your hunger all these years? And I giggle, how do you know, maybe I’ve been raping you every night in your sleep, and he gurgles, I wish, and again that carefree laugh, he always becomes completely different after we make love, the bitterness stuck in his throat dissolves, and suddenly he’s full of love. My Noam, he strokes my back, poor girl, you were so worried about me, and I am already prepared to weep with relief, it was awful, to see you like that, in the hospital, with all those tubes, and he teases, that nurse in the emergency room wasn’t at all bad, and I bite his shoulder, I saw how she turned you on, and he laughs, bullshit, you know I only want you, and I know that it’s true, only it doesn’t always sound as good as it does now, usually it sounds like a threat, but now his words caress me inside with soothing movements, the difference between inside and out suddenly blurred. Is this silence I hear inside or outside, how is it that no cars are passing in the street below, and I think about the dreadful silence in that cave, only the whisper of the steam like the steam of a furnace rising from the overthrown land, seeing the corpses of the ruined, smoking cities, the destroyed garden of God, and then he says, you know, on my way home from the Arava I climbed up the mountain of Sodom, did you know that it was hollow inside, that it’s both a mountain and a cave? And I answer in a whisper, no, I didn’t know. It’s the saddest place I know, he says, because it will never recover, even though thousands of years have passed it seems as if nothing has changed there, the sin was so deep that the ground can’t heal, it was punished by eternal barrenness, and I am already used to him reading my thoughts, even as a boy he had a kind of intrusive insight, and even if he was sometimes wrong I only remembered the times when he was right, the submissi
ve wonder I felt whenever he continued my private train of thought, or answered a question I hadn’t asked.

  Don’t worry, he laughs in satisfaction, I’m not the last man alive, Lot’s daughters thought that all the men in the world were extinct, but this is the opposite situation, I might be extinct soon but the world is full of men, and I hug him, don’t be silly, you’re the last man for me, and the first too, I add in pious pride, and he drawls yes, but in the middle there was someone else, and his voice grows cold, like his body which suddenly withdraws from me, and I pull him back, Udi stop spoiling things, and he grumbles, I’m spoiling things? It was you who spoiled things, and I crush his shoulder, stop it, that’s enough, control yourself, I spoiled things once and you spoil them all the time, Udigi, you have to get better now, try to think only about good things, this bitterness is poisoning you, you’re ruining all of our lives. I try to mount him again, it was so sweet before, only me and his friendly, happy penis, but he writhes underneath me, I have to pee, he gets up heavily and leans on the wall, on the doorpost, advancing with dragging steps, it seems as if he will never reach the toilet waiting for him with its mouth open, and I follow him in the darkness, I don’t want to switch on the light, to see the dishes strewn around the house, the clothes, the shoes, the old furniture, all the signs of neglect that have taken over our lives, and I look at his narrow silhouette, let’s go away tomorrow morning, Udi, we haven’t been anywhere together for years, we’ll leave Noga with my mother and drive up north, and he leans on the sink, I don’t think so, he says, I still don’t feel well, but I refuse to give up, this is my goal now, sudden and powerful, to get away from here, to escape from this address, from the bear hug of the old walls, as if an earthquake is making its way toward us. You’ll feel better when we get away, I insist, we deserve a bit of a rest, you’ll see that it will make you better, and I stand behind him, my hands seeking the consent of his body.

  But he looks into the mirror, denying me, feeling the new stubble on his cheeks, his jaw jutting forward stubbornly, giving him a childish expression, why won’t he let go, clinging to that old wound as if it’s the most precious asset he’s acquired in his life. What did you do already, I hear Anat’s quiet, beloved voice, and I say, even if it seems small to you, to him it’s big, his hurt is big, and she laughs, it’s big because he enlarges it, look how he uses it, making you stew on a fire of guilt all the time, your whole life you have to make it up to him, anyone would think he’s such a saint himself. He never cheated on me, I defend him, you simply don’t appreciate his sensitivity, and she says, I appreciate his sensitivity to himself very well, but where’s his sensitivity to you, he was never sensitive to you, he has a need to blame, and you have a need to be blamed. She’s right, I say to myself, I won’t let him blame me any longer, I won’t beg, and I let go of his body, forget it, I say and step into the shower, if you don’t want to go with me I’ll go by myself when you recover, quickly closing the curtain, and he freezes in front of the mirror, clever Anat, I should always listen to her advice, and then he says, all right, if you want it so much we’ll go.

  In the morning I vanquish my old enemy, the alarm clock, shutting it up before it begins to shake, and rushing into Noga’s room to wake her up, but the empty bed declares her absence, and I stand in front of it in a panic, an empty room immediately turns into a memorial room, the pictures on the wall take on a new meaning. Here she is one week old, her head peeping over Udi’s shoulder, her eyes half-closed, and here all three of us are on a checked blanket, they’re hugging each other and I’m watching from the side, my hair tied back and my face beautiful, almost as beautiful as my mother in this picture, only she always displayed her beauty and I hid mine, as if it were stolen, and here are her notebooks on the table, I turn the pages in crude curiosity, searching for some unclear information, which has suddenly become urgent, they are almost all empty, isolated sentences imprisoned on the first pages, and after that a white, worrying silence.

  I look at the objects frozen in their last race, the clothes flung onto the rug, sleeves gaping as if they have just this moment been discarded, still holding her movements, a fierce longing suddenly stabs me, and I sit down on the rug, how can I go without her, she has to come with us, we’ll all go together, but then that “together” sends a tremor through me, with all its tension, to be torn between them again, to see her trying to arouse his love, to be angry with him again for disappointing her, and then with myself, I haven’t got the strength for it, and I call my mother, her voice is low and sad, very different from the voice she once had. How are you, I ask, and she says, last night my ulcer woke me several times, but it’s quiet now, for a year now that wound in her stomach has filled her world, and she cares for it devotedly as if it were a baby, if only she’d cared for us with such devotion, and I ask coldly, how’s Noga, and she sighs, she’s all right, but you have to do something about her situation in school. What situation, I ask in surprise, what happened? And she says, what, hasn’t she told you? She’s completely isolated, the other girls laugh at her for dressing like a boy, and the boys shun her because she’s a girl, and I squeeze the telephone hard, so why didn’t she say anything to me, the tears are already tickling my throat, and my mother doesn’t even try to hide her pride, won’t let me think for a minute that I’m a better mother than she was, she doesn’t want to worry you, don’t you understand?

  Let me talk to her, I say, trying to steady my voice, Nogigi, good morning, and she says, good morning Mother, and this formal trio of words stings my ears, good morning Mother, and I say, I’m going up north with Daddy for a couple of days, to rest, and she says, good, as long as Daddy gets better. Granny told me that you’re not happy at school now, I venture, but she quickly evades the issue, it doesn’t matter, Mother, I’ll manage, the important thing is for you and Daddy to go and have fun, and for Daddy to get better, and I apologize, it’s only for a couple of days, we’ll see you the day after tomorrow and then you can tell me all about it, and she cuts me short, bye Mom, I’m late already, and leaves me alone with her things. Why like a boy, I think indignantly, it’s true that she doesn’t preen, barely combs her hair, mostly wears Udi’s tee-shirts, which cover her almost to the knees, but why should that make anyone laugh, and then I remember that for a long time none of the girls from her class have come round, and the shrill voices haven’t been heard over the phone for a long time either, asking, can I speak to Noga, and I haven’t even noticed, and now I no longer want to go anywhere, only to disguise myself as a ten-year-old girl and hurry to her school and sit next to her and be her best friend, listen to her secrets and tell her that she’s the cutest girl in the class.

  Clouds of fragrant steam escape from the bathroom, and I go in and see him lying in the tub, his boyish body covered with transparent water, his hair combed back, exposing pale bays of baldness, emphasizing the precisely chiseled features, and I decide not to tell him anything for the time being, whenever I try to share my concern about Noga with him he stiffens as if he’s being accused, defending himself aggressively. How are you feeling, I ask, and he smiles, if I made it here under my own steam that’s already something, and I look at him and marvel, all this is mine, in some strange way, a whole person who’s mine, I’ve been given him anew, I’ve succeeded in stealing him from the seductive arms of the disease, in spite of everything he prefers me to her, and already I am full of foolish pride in my victory, eagerly dipping my hand in the water and walking two fingers over his body, and he tries to pull me in but I elude him, let’s wait till we get there, and he chuckles, we can do it now and then too.

  The old traveling bag I packed for the hospital, only two days ago, fills up again, I pile in clothes and toiletries without thinking, with a forced gaiety that gradually convinces even me, it seems that almost everything is a question of decision, sorrow and happiness, hostility and closeness, even health and sickness, and only once in a while a dark wave of worry creeps toward me from Noga’s room. I peep into it agai
n, it seems to me that stifled moans are hiding there, like the moans of survivors of an earthquake buried under the ruins, you spoke to her only a minute ago on the phone, I remind myself, she’s not here at all, but even after we leave the house, turning the key three times in the door, I have to go up again, just to make sure I switched off the boiler, I say to Udi, and run to her room, and look round and call her name, her room is empty and nevertheless it seems to me that we are leaving behind us in the locked house a helpless living creature, begging for help.

  Seven

  We slide down the great asphalt chute into the dry arms of the desert, Udi drives fast and I press my knees together, the familiar fingers of fear pinching deep in my groin, stinging its absorbent cheeks, and I lay my hand on his thigh, not so fast Udi, you’re overdoing it, and he complains, whenever I’m enjoying myself you think I’m overdoing it, but nevertheless he slows down a little, so I can see the Judean desert waving its wand, and I marvel, look how dry it is, a completely different country, and he says, it’s simply not irrigated, that’s all. But only a few minutes ago everything was still green, I protest, how does it happen so quickly, and he explains with surprising patience, as if to a group he is guiding, about the journey of the rain clouds from the sea to the mountains, rising higher and higher, growing thicker and thicker, until they reach the summit, the city high on the mountaintops, from which the air begins to decline, and where everything changes with terrific speed, the water turns back into vapor, and the vapor turns back into gas, and I ask, and any cloud that hasn’t dropped its rain by the time it reaches Jerusalem just dries up, and Udi nods, yes, it will get smaller and smaller until it stops being a cloud. So what will it be, I ask sadly, because suddenly I remember the story he once made up for Noga when she was a baby, about the little cloud Hanan, the innocent, kindhearted cloud who was determined to bring rain to the parched desert plants at any price, and how he climbed from the sea and swelled and swelled, with the raindrops already heavy inside him, about to tear open his little belly, but the minute he passed over Jerusalem he evaporated into thin air, before he had a chance to drop his rain, and all the thirsty desert plants raised their heads and saw him disintegrating in the sky, his good intentions turning into warm, useless vapors. I would urge him to change the end of the story, let him rain at the last minute, I would plead, let him rain on the border of the desert at least, how can you let him go to waste like that, for all his good intentions, and I would be far more upset than Noga, who didn’t really understand the dimensions of the loss, and now I look hopefully at the sky, perhaps today he’ll make it, the little cloud Hanan, but it’s clear and empty, no puppy cloud is frisking in its courts, indifferently it accompanies us, like a couple grown old without having any children, their bellies are creased with desolate strands of gray but the great sorrow is already behind them.