The dismembered corpses of our doubts lie before us on the sheets like sacrificial offerings, and I kneel on the enormous bed, like a field of cotton it encompasses me, white and generous, and I can run through its vastness and wave my arms, embrace the air of the world with open arms, I have no doubt, the Holy Spirit has passed here, like a bird it entered the window to sanctify us forever, and Udi presses against my back, one minute he’s underneath me and the next he’s above me, a hungry child falling on the candy of his dreams, and I turn over in blissful exhaustion, tonight I have understood everything, how good it is to be rid of the torturing doubts, now I understand that for me he is like a child or parents, impossible to choose or to free yourself from, and this is what binds us, this is what makes us husband and wife. A wave of compassion engulfs me as I give birth to him again and again, with a sweet resignation as if this is my vocation, until he groans beside me, his body weak and throbbing, and I pull the blanket up and cover us both, it seems full of warm downy kisses, don’t sleep yet, its kisses tickle me, you mustn’t go to sleep, they whisper, the night is full of desires, tonight is the night when all your wishes cóme true, you’ll never have another night like this as long as you live. I sit up abruptly and look around me, who’s whispering here, Udi is already asleep, who’s suddenly dripping poison into my ear, the minute he goes to sleep my conscious mind begins to nag again, wake him up, the soft lips of the blanket murmur, don’t you know that you must never let a child fall asleep after he’s received a blow in case he never wakes up again, he’s leaving you now in his sleep, he won’t come back to you, you’ll long for this night as long as you live, and I press myself to him, don’t leave me Udi, his hand caresses me in his sleep, spreading warmth like the red-hot coil of an electric heater, the malicious whispers are silenced and I enter the little hut of sleep I used to tell Noga about when she couldn’t fall asleep, and lock the door behind me, no one will bother me here, protected as the night advances, its colors subtly changing on the window, until a terrified roar startles me into wakefulness.
I can’t see, he screams, his hands stretched out in front of him, beating the drowsy air like a baby’s, Na’ama I can’t see, and I wake up abruptly, the pounding of my heart drowning out the words, what is he saying, what does it mean, I’ve forgotten the language and I don’t want to remember it, it’s evil, too evil for me, and I mumble with my mouth closed, don’t worry everything’s all right, and he yells, what’s all right, maybe you’re all right but I can’t see a thing, and I sit up and put my arms around him, calm down and it will go away, in my alarm it seems to me that I can’t see either, closing my eyes in solidarity, what will Noga say when we both come home blind, groping after her voice as we stumble round the apartment. Leave me alone, he shakes my arms off his body, I don’t need your embraces, and I get out of bed mortified, my whole body is still covered in a thin layer of love, a scab of congealed sperm that peels off easily. Through the window a clear spring day beckons me, a golden bell in the belly of the sun seems to be pealing merrily, calling us to come out into the world, to enjoy its delights, but for us it is all too late, in an instant it has become too late again.
His eyes bulge, almost straining out of their sockets, his hands grope over the bed, in an instant he has adopted the desolate movements of blindness, and I go up to him, don’t worry, it will pass like the paralysis passed, the tests showed that everything was fine, and he says sullenly, their tests don’t interest me, they make mistakes all the time, I’m sure I’ve got a tumor that keeps pressing on something else, and I say, that’s impossible, that’s precisely what they ruled out, it’s apparently some stress or mental distress, you have to try to think of what’s troubling you, and he jerks his head furiously from side to side, you dare to ask me what’s troubling me, he suddenly screams, it’s you who troubles me all the time, it’s because of you that I’m sick!
A wave of nausea rises in me and I run to the bathroom and stand at the sink, gulping water from the tap, splashing it on my tortured face, the face of a prisoner who has lost all hope of being freed, what’s happening here, what’s happening to him, he’s never been so volatile before, I have to return him to himself, my love, I whisper to the mirror, my love, my husband, it’s me who was with you last night, don’t turn me into an enemy, don’t separate us, didn’t you always want nights like this, for us to cover ourselves with layers of love, like warm underclothes in winter, so why are you turning away from me now of all times, and I bend down to the tap again, drinking and drinking and filling with anger, as if murky waters of hostility are flowing from its mouth, no words will help, he simply can’t stand happiness, like a child who destroys his favorite toy, so that no one will take it away from him, but I’m nobody’s toy, and already I want to yell back at him, how dare you blame me for your sickness, but my voice is inaudible, look at you, absorbed in your own insult when he can’t see, that’s the problem now, all the rest is luxury, and again I control my rage, collapsing into the bath, only yesterday the foam of our love poured out here, and today barbed wire separates us, a wall that has gone up overnight, arbitrarily cutting our common body in two, at the command of an unknown ruler.
Na’ama, I hear him calling me with the tyranny of the sick, where are you, I need you, and I force myself to come out, wrapped in a towel, what do you want, I ask, apprehensively examining his closed eyes, and he says, for a few days now I’ve been trying to understand what’s happening to me, what’s wrong with my life, and this morning it became clear to me that it’s all because of the wasted seed, that’s why I’m sick. Have you gone mad, I exclaim in horror, what are you talking about? And he says in a cold, confident voice, as if announcing the results of scientific research, about the fact that I go to bed with you, that’s what I’m talking about, about the fact that you squeeze my sperm out of me, I can’t go to bed with you anymore, the sperm is the essence of life, and I let you drink up my life with all the lips of your body.
I sit down on the bed, stunned, covering my lips with my hand, this is exactly how they slandered the Jews, that they drank the blood of a Christian child, and now the convert, whose nature has been converted by disease, is slandering me brazenly, and in my rage I see that his face has relaxed, and a new certainty has taken it over, a false and distorting certainty, which makes my blood boil, but you’re the one who always wants to go to bed with me, an indignant shriek escapes my throat, the stunned shriek of a trapped animal, so how dare you blame me? I’m sick of hearing that I’m the one who wants it, he says tight-lipped, you’re the one who makes me want it, if you weren’t with me I wouldn’t want it, and I scream, great, so live without me, I’m sick of your accusations!
You won’t get rid of me so easily after you’ve made me sick, he says through clenched teeth, and I tremble all over, I made you sick, you ingrate, I made you sick? But the words stick in my throat, they won’t come out, they quiver between my rage-swollen tonsils, who sentenced our moments of grace to so short a life, and what will become of us, and what will become of Noga, and when I think of her the tears rush out, again she is doomed to disappointment, she must be waiting for us to come back to her tomorrow relaxed and happy, to usher her into our happiness as into a glorious palace.
In the corridors the vacuum cleaners are already advancing, hurrying the guests to leave their rooms, to be sucked up into the pipeline of pleasures awaiting them, and only we go on sitting in our room like bleak basalt rocks, strange to each other, strange to the residue of our love on the sheets that will soon be changed, strange to the benign resort surrounding us, and I sob into the wet towel, I can’t go on like this, I can’t take it anymore, and he snaps, I’m sick and tired of your tears, you only think about yourself, I’m sick and you’re sorry for yourself! And I look round the room, what should I do, if I get dressed and go out he’ll say that I’m abandoning him, and if I stay here I have nowhere to hide from him, trapped in the sights of a blind sniper, who could kill me by mistake. I return chastised to the b
athroom, the sink allows me to lean on it, and again I stare at my face, eyelids already swollen over red eyes, lips slack from crying, this is not how I was supposed to look this morning, this is not where we were supposed to spend the morning, but on the veranda opposite the radiance of Mount Hermon, with cups of coffee and plates laden with delicious food, and then to walk in the fields, to see the flowers blooming, and now we have filled the valley with our bitterness, and I try to repeat to myself, just as I repeat to the women in the shelter, you’re not a victim, you always have a choice, you’re not a victim, but what choice do I have now that he’s bound me to him by his lameness. Again and again I wash my face in boiling-hot water, as you would wash a pot with ancient dirt clinging to it, ugly, black oil stains, you have no choice, I say to myself, you have no choice but to comb this hair, clothe this body, put stockings on these feet, and I get dressed clumsily in the passage, congratulating myself as at some great feat, keeping out the range of his blind vision, and when I’m ready I say to him, I’m going down to have coffee, should I bring you something? He doesn’t answer, and I peep in warily, his arm is covering his eyes, his mouth is open, bring me a lemon, he mutters, I feel terribly nauseated and I’ve got a headache.
So it’s only a migraine, I breathe a sigh of relief, my old enemy the migraine, better a known enemy than a foreign invader, how well I know the blinding lights, the numbing nausea, the black, greasy headache, I spent days in bed with it, even on the morning of my wedding day it arrived to spoil the party, until one o’clock I lay on my childhood bed with my eyes closed, a wet towel on my forehead, in the old house that had become the home of my father’s loneliness, which had gradually emptied of its contents. Hungry cats had clawed the wicker chairs until they fell apart, like nests nobody needed, and the walls were stripped of their garments, the signs of the pictures my mother had taken still stamped on them, like the marks of dry blows, and only my father’s enormous barometer remained, a thermometer of giants haughtily dominating the wall, showing off the glass tube with the heavy dark pool of mercury at the bottom, miraculously climbing, rising and falling, predicting the weather.
He would stand thoughtfully opposite the antique barometer, a rare smile on his lips, like a victorious general surveying the battlefield. No point in hanging out the washing today, he would announce to my mother, when we were still a family, it won’t get dry, and she would protest, but the weather forecast said it would be hot and dry, and she would go outside defiantly with the full basin, only to hurry back defeated a few hours later when the sky turned black, her precious washing soaking wet. These were his moments of pride and pleasure, before her marveling eyes he celebrated his victory over the forecaster, that mysterious rival who provoked him daily, as if the two of them were competing for my mother’s love, and so precious were these moments to him that he tried to reconstruct them even after she left, trying to impress her with unequivocal messages. Before I went to bed I always asked him, will it be hot or cold, and he would station himself in front of his barometer, study it reverentially, and give me an accurate forecast, which was never wrong. All his confidence, the essence of all the knowledge he accumulated during his life, the essence of his pride, all of them seemed to be gathered in the dense pool of mercury rising and falling in the glass tube, and I with the damp towel draped over my head like a veil, my eyes almost blind, on my wedding day, stumbling to the kitchen to get another lemon, my hands groping in front of me, until a fit of giddiness overcame me, churning up my insides, and I reached for the wall and collided with a hard object that fell with me to the ground, and we both crashed together, me and the giant barometer of the world.
The mysterious solution instantly fell apart into dozens of gray mercury balls, jubilant as prisoners let out of jail, rolling under the beds, all their gravity gone in an instant, all they want now is to play, not to make predictions about the future, and I crawled under the bed, trying to stick them together again, among the sharp splinters of glass, trampling the exploded myth beneath my knees. To my horror I heard footsteps approaching, I didn’t dare to raise my eyes, don’t worry Daddy, I wept among the ruins, I’ll buy you a new one, tomorrow morning I’ll buy you a new one, with the money we get for wedding presents, and he said in his quiet, lifeless voice, but there aren’t any more like it, it’s a rare old barometer, and I insisted, I’ll find one, you’ll see, I’ll find you one exactly like it, I’ll get money for wedding presents and I’ll take it all and buy you one exactly like it, and the migraine tightened like a vise around my head, how was I going to stand beneath the wedding canopy, and how was he going to stand beside me, the remnants of his pride leaking out of him precisely on my wedding day, and from then on I hid from him in the bustle of my new life, forgetting my promise, and only on the rare occasions when I went to visit him would the shadow of the barometer on the wall haunt me, and I would promise, tomorrow I’m going to buy you one exactly like it, and he would nod silently, and nobody asked him anymore if it would be hot or cold, and so stripped of all his strength he died one night in his sleep, of a silent heart attack, with wayward balls of mercury still playing under his bed.
I’ll go down and get you a lemon, I say quickly, before he can stop me, and lean on the door I shut behind me, for the moment I’m free, and if it’s only a migraine it’s not such a big deal, I can cope with a migraine, but when I enter the dining room and look at the vacationers eating heartily, cramming healthy food into eager stomachs, I realize that I am already in a completely different existence, what’s waiting for me today is completely different from what’s waiting for them, no trips in jeeps or picnics in the heart of the spring or dips in the pool, and I sit down at a little table for two, there are no tables for one here, and stare at the radiant landscape revealed by the passing of the storm, the valley as blue as the sea, boats of red tiles calmly sailing on it, precisely in such a beautiful place he has to stop seeing, and again the tears, those transparent medusas, sting my cheeks and I bow my head, so as not to see the cheerful chewing around me and not to be seen in my disgrace. The waiter pours me coffee and I thank him tearfully as if he’s saved my life, how pathetic I have become in a single morning, and all the time his demanding, ungrateful presence squats on the ceiling dotted with little lights like stars, two floors above me, watching me resentfully, crushing me with its weight. I get up and wander round the buffet, dismayed by the abundance, unable to make up my mind, a young woman next to me fills her plate, her movements greedy inside her robe, she spills carrot juice on me without a word of apology, and I snatch a roll as if I’m stealing it and return shamefaced to my table, scarcely able to swallow, all this luxury upsets me, irritates my nerves, and I escape to the stairs and only outside the door of our room do I realize that I’ve forgotten to ask for a lemon, they had everything there except for this one little item, the only thing I really needed. Hesitantly I go into the kitchen, where I am greeted by scowling looks, very different from the looks outside, whose politeness knows no bounds, and I ask for a lemon, actually I feel more comfortable there, in the backyard of the sumptuous breakfast, and even when the lemon is in my hand, big and yellow, I am in no hurry to leave, fingering it as if it is a precious fragile-stemmed citron that I must bring to the hut I have laboriously built to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, and I carry it carefully upstairs, holding it in front of me as I enter the room, like an offering, which there is nobody to accept, for the bed is empty, the big armchair, the bath, the room is empty of him, of his wrath, of his blindness, and I sit down on the bed and distractedly bite into the peel of the lemon. What’s happened here, have I betrayed my mission, have I come too late, or perhaps he has recovered, and hurried after me to tell me that everything is all right now, and to apologize for something said in a moment of blindness, and we will carry on with our lovers’ holiday, gliding about in our white robes as carefree as angels in heaven, and this possibility fills me with joy, even if he doesn’t apologize I’ll forgive him, I decide, the main thing is to
go home relaxed, for Noga’s sake, not to trap her in the close web of our tension.
I get up and go to the window, this golden day suddenly standing by my side, perhaps we will still make friends, me and the sun and the trees and the flowers, now I see them for the first time, cascades of spring flowers, yellow and purple and red, from a distance they have no names or histories, only bright spots of lively effervescent color. No doubt about it, there’s a party going on down there, and I am ready to join in, to mingle with the brief lives of the spring flowers, almost as brief as the life of a match, and suddenly among the trees I see a pale figure swaying in dancing steps, flitting from tree to tree, and then kneeling, bowing down to the ground, as if in some ancient rite, and I am filled with dread and I hurry down to the little wood, and there I find him bowed between the tall chrysanthemums and the shining buttercups, his shoulders shaking, rattling noises rising from him as if from the depths of the earth.
Husband and Wife Page 11