Husband and Wife

by Zeruya Shalev

  You think it’s such a pleasure to live with an angel, she says through gritted teeth, living next to an angel turns you into a monster, don’t you understand? He was too good, his goodness was inhuman, it was impossible to be angry with him, always trying to please, sacrificing himself until you could go mad, it was scary, as if he was atoning for some crime, can’t you understand? And I shake my head, no, I don’t understand, why is it so difficult to accept goodness for what it is, why do you only believe in evil, and she says, listen to me, Na’ama, it took me a long time to understand too, at first I couldn’t believe my luck, but gradually I started to feel as if I was going mad, he tormented me with his saintliness, and I protest, he tormented you, what are you talking about, he was incapable of harming a fly, you remember how he took pity on the poor pigeons? And she says, I’m talking about things that are hidden from the naked eye, all saints turn into martyrs in the end, and that’s what happened to him, that’s what happened to me, I found myself in the role of the torturer, he was so pure that I became dirty, and I shake my head indignantly, I don’t believe this, how can you blame him, you’re just like the worst men, who blame their wives for all their own shortcomings.

  You know what it’s like to go to bed with a corpse, to make love to a corpse? she pounces on me, he was so lifeless I had no choice, I started to look for life outside the house, and even then he wasn’t angry, on the contrary, sometimes I thought that he actually enjoyed living through me. Because he loved you so much, because he was so happy with you, I plead, we were all happy until you ruined everything, and she takes my hand, clinging with all her strength to the talk she has entered into so reluctantly, like going into a filthy room, but the moment you begin to clean it you can’t stop, how come he was so happy when I was so unhappy, his happiness showed a total lack of sensitivity, he didn’t see me at all, and I wasn’t only unhappy, I was guilty too, for being the one who spoiled everything, for being the one for whom nothing was ever enough, when in fact all I wanted was to live, I had to save myself, not for a career, believe me, simply in order to be a human being. You know what a human being is, it’s good and bad together, and he took all the good for himself and burdened me with all the bad, but it wasn’t real, it was all false, both his role and mine, and I bow my head and close my eyes, as if she’s telling me a bedtime story, a good one that puts me to sleep without any problems, my head sways and it seems to me that we’re standing facing each other in the yard of the old house, I’m holding two newborn kittens in my hands, still blind and slimy, and she’s shouting at me, leave those kittens alone, now their mother won’t want them anymore, you must never touch such small kittens, because of you they’ll die, because of you they won’t last the day, and I drop them in alarm, and now I yell at her, I don’t buy it, for the sake of your little children you could have lived with a man who was too good, that’s not such a tragedy, and she lowers her eyes, her eyelids tremble, I thought you’d be better off without me, I thought I was only harming you, he was such a wonderful father.

  But after she left he stopped being our father, he was so sunk in his sorrow that he didn’t notice our existence, all his devotion drowned in that ocean of grief as if it had never been, she’s right, it wasn’t real, and all these years all my anger was directed solely against her, and even now it’s hard for me to part from that anger, like a coat you’re afraid to take off though the weather has changed, and I examine her bony fingers as she lights a cigarette, the lines above her upper lip crowd together, surrounding the pale stick, her movements are still theatrical, as if dozens of people are watching her every minute of the day, in spite of the marks of age, in spite of the bites of the ulcer, in her stylish embroidered dress she still looks striking, how beautiful she was then, falling on us with wet kisses like a winter wind, appearing and disappearing, scheming schemes.

  Maybe I was too good too, always trying to prove that I wasn’t like her, to calm Udi’s fears, and after that morning it was no longer possible, an endless atonement for a sin that never happened, and when I think about it suddenly, about the most beautiful morning of my life, for the first time I allow myself to take pleasure in its details, I don’t understand why I didn’t stay there, standing at the window when the first rain began to fall, why was I in such a hurry to run after Udi, a pointless pursuit that went on for nearly eight years, to placate him and please him, I should have stayed there, let him fight his wars by himself, make his decisions by himself, not stationed myself immediately in front of him to absorb his frustrations, to take my punishment before I had a chance to sin, the way I ran after him demonstrated guilt, weakness, defeatism, everything that had made it possible for him to leave me tonight. You know that he’s got someone, you know that he left me for someone else, I say quietly, and she shrugs her shoulders, her blue eyes glitter in her dark face, it doesn’t make any difference, it really makes no difference, he left for himself, she says, and I say, you know that I wanted to leave him a few years ago but I stayed, you know that there was somebody who loved me? And she strokes my shoulder, you’ll still be loved, Noam, I promise you, but it sounds completely unreal to me, that there was once a man, with curly hair on the back of his neck, who loved me enough to let me go. I remember how he crouched, bending over my thighs, and I touched the nape of his neck, and then he raised his eyes to me, one was blue and one gray, and both were sad, what did he promise me then, what did he try to say, and I wail, instead of staying with him, instead of enjoying his love, I ran to appease Udi, to get Noga, to stick us all together, but ever since then nothing’s worked.

  It wasn’t working so well before then either, she says, and I protest, nonsense, don’t you remember how happy we were when Noga was born, how good it was until I spoiled everything, and she laughs, you call that good? He was as jealous as a child of the attention you gave her, he wanted you to devote yourself entirely to him, don’t you remember how he was sick when she was born, and I say in astonishment, what are you talking about, he fell in love with her at once, he would walk round with her in his arms for hours, bathe her, get up for when she cried at night, and she says, but that was part of his power game too, he wanted to humiliate you, to show you that even here he was better than you. You’re going too far, Mother, I say, and she admits, maybe I am a bit, I wasn’t living with you, but I was here often enough to see that even before her fall there were problems, and I listen to her in a kind of daze, as if I am hearing good but dubious news, from an unreliable news agency, and suddenly it seems to me that there is a fire in the house, breathing from a gaping mouth, a wave of heat advances on me and a weak voice says, what fall, and again it demands to know, what fall? And I heave a sigh of relief, Noga is getting better, here she is standing on her feet, leaning against the wall, her eyes clear, but how long has she been standing here, how much has she heard, and my mother drops her eyes, I know that she saw her approaching but she went on talking anyway, and I put out my arms and draw her to me, and sit her on my lap, her body is limp and babyish, and I feel a pleasant tingling in my breasts as if restorative milk is collecting there for her, and I press her to me and whisper, you fell out of Daddy’s hands, you were two, a bucket of water forgotten downstairs by the cleaning lady saved your life.

  Seventeen

  As in a time of war, when all the men are called up to fight on the front and the women stay with the children in the rear, we live, three women in one house, where everything is completely changed, and where it seems as if no man has ever set foot. At night I offer my mother the double bed, whose very image fills me with sadness, and open up the sofa in the living room, the old bed of my loneliness, for I was abandoned long before he left, and its hairy arms reach out and draw me into another tormented night, the sun seems still to be beating on the concrete shell above my head, and I am seared by its dark rays engraving tattoos of jealousy in my flesh. I see him in her bed, his body that grew up in my arms moving lewdly against her supple body, long and narrow as a snake’s, and I knock on hi
s back, let me be with you, don’t leave me alone, I promise not to be a nuisance, just let me sleep here next to you, but he is so absorbed in her that he doesn’t even notice me, it’s hard for me to imagine what he looks like at this moment because I was always too close to him, with my eyes too tightly closed. I can’t see him from the side, only feel the tenderness that comes from him at moments of intimacy, a rare and surprising warmth like the touch of a sunbeam on a rainy day, how does he make love, I try to remember, conjuring up his body on the sofa by my side, how is love made, how do the hands reach out, how do the lips part, how does the clenched body, withdrawn into itself, open, how does this miracle happen, I am so far from love that I can hardly see it even in my mind’s eye, for nights on end I lay here by myself, with him in the other room, behind a closed door, why didn’t I creep into his bed in the middle of the night, like a child into the bed of its parents after a bad dream, why didn’t I nestle between his limbs like she does now, pushing her black milk-filled breast to his mouth, and he sucks and sucks, and I beat the mattress, he’s mine, he’s mine, he’s not allowed to suck the milk from another woman’s breast, but suddenly this vision changes into a worse one, and whenever I close my eyes I see them lying in a big bed with the baby ensconced between them, and then I quickly switch on the light, trembling with rage, no, it’s impossible, he wouldn’t lie in bed with a strange baby, he wouldn’t betray his own child, but then I see him again, walking up and down the living room, holding the fair-skinned baby in his arms and murmuring to her, shush, shush, shush.

  So my father’s steps would plow through the black earth of my nights, again and again I would hear them all over the house when I tried to fall asleep, drawing sleep toward me on a thin thread, like a kite, come, come down to me, and when it was almost there his listless steps would tear the thread, and I would grope with small, tired hands, to mend it. Night after night I would curse my mother, wishing her ill, wishes that all came true, that she would remain alone until the end of her life, that she would grow old quickly, that she would become ugly. Yotam would wake up and cry, I want Mommy, and I would make room for him in my bed, for his chubby body that was growing thinner from day to day, nobody but me noticed that he had stopped eating, that he had stopped smiling, and I would say to him, don’t cry, tomorrow we’re going to Mommy, but when she came to take us I would run away to the citrus groves, I couldn’t get used to the new apartment in the town, I couldn’t leave my father alone, even though he was so absorbed in himself that he barely noticed my existence. In the evening I would call him to eat, watch him dunking dry bread in a cup of yogurt and chewing it slowly, as if in his sleep, aren’t you going to your mother, he would ask, and I would say, I’m staying with you, even though he didn’t ask me to, even though I may have burdened him with my presence. When I did go to her my hatred would cool, it was easier to hate her from a distance than from close up, and now too when she’s sleeping in the next room her presence casts a strange peacefulness over me, of tender feelings hidden in basements, in dovecotes, in attics, that suddenly dare to emerge. For years I withstood the temptation, I refused to love her, my father’s murderer, even after he died, I only agreed to give her Noga, not myself, I saw with satisfaction how she was spending her life opposite old movies on the television, opposite the movie stars she once outshone in her beauty, everyone said so, and now for the first time a breach had opened up for her, and she had stepped in straightaway, without wasting any time, and here she is, polishing up her new image, a combination of sorrow and resignation, pride and restraint, as if she is a sad, respectable widow and not a cruel murderess, but my anger against her is dwarfed by my anger against Udi, and that too is growing pale and tired.

  I force myself to think in small steps, not about the rest of my life but about the next minute, concentrating on Noga’s recovery, little by little and with great difficulty she parts from her illness, as if they are a pair of lovers whose bodies cling together, refusing to detach themselves. Most of the time she sleeps, and even when she wakes sleep accompanies her, sitting next to her in the kitchen as she swallows a few spoons of chicken soup, a little lukewarm tea, and goes back to bed like a sleepwalker. Hypnotized by fear I watch her, as if she is a suspicious object at the bus stop, looking at the bed bowed beneath the weight of the warm limbs, the feathers of fair hair, the tangle of bedclothes, as if a completely different person will finally emerge from between the sheets. I am glad of her sleepy silence, so fearful am I that she might share her sorrow with me, I marvel at my mother’s ability to welcome her brief awakenings warmly and naturally, and one night when I am making up my bed on the sofa my mother advances on me brandishing a cigarette, you’re doing the child an injustice, she says, stop feeling sorry for her, your pity makes you shrink from her, and I nod my head in silence, her words oppress me in their accuracy, but what shall I do with them, how can you stop worrying, how can you stop pitying, if you stop worrying you stop loving, no? Because that’s love.

  This little girl needs to be loved, she goes on, not to be protected or pitied or feared, are you capable of pure and simple love? And I shrink before her, her stiff clay face surrounding eyes that are young, irritating in their surprising vitality, and I avert my eyes to the wall behind her, where an ancient picture is hanging, in a dusty frame Yotam and I are frozen in a clumsy embrace, I’m bending down to him and offering him a cookie and he’s smiling, and behind us is the old house, an illusory shelter roofed with red tiles, and I say, maybe I really don’t know how to love, love is a luxury, you can only afford it when everything’s all right, and everything is never all right. I look sadly at my little brother, his passionately expressive face, like Noga’s, comes closer and closer to me, him I really loved, he growled in my arms like a wild little bear, I was the wolf and he was the bear and together we romped wildly in my mother’s high bed, until it became my father’s bed, and sank beneath him, and Yotam almost disappeared inside the scaffolding of his bones, and nobody saw, only I tried to save him, and perhaps it was then that love turned into a roar of panic, and I am on the point of hurling all this at her, I suppose you know how to love, but what’s the point, that was how Udi always threw the ball at me as if it was on fire, without pausing for a moment to think of what it held, and suddenly I think of him in a kind of surprise, once Udi was here, edgy, tense, his narrow eyes darting, chasing each other over the triangular ground of his face, and now he’s not here, and for a moment I don’t care where he is. The tense, tiring expectation of his return has given way to a strange indifference, for I have a little girl here and I have to learn to love her, far from his sharp, jealous, complaining shadow, and again I look at the photograph, we had no idea of what was hiding underneath those red tiles, but so what, what’s wrong with illusions, why do children have to have the truth shoved into their faces and be told to cope with it?

  The years of the lie were far better than the years of the truth, I say to her, think of how happy we were, couldn’t you have kept it up for ten more years? And she lowers her head, her still-dark hair tied tightly back in a ponytail, stretching the ravaged skin of her face, you think I didn’t try? The easiest thing is to lie, but it’s not right, even a child can’t live long in an illusion, and I protest, Yotam could have, it’s what he’s been doing ever since, unable to cope, wandering round the world like a ghost ship, maybe Noga’s like him too, maybe she won’t be able to either, and she says, Noga will be able to, she has a good mother, better than the one you had, and I cringe, shrinking from this wretched compliment of hers, and I say, let’s go to bed, Mother, and she pulls me to her, and strokes my face very slowly, as if she’s blind, her fingers smell of perfume and cigarettes, and when I lie down on the sofa I think that he never stroked my face so gravely, with complete attention, and perhaps I shouldn’t have given up on this either.

  And this is only the beginning of a hot, dark torrent of resentment, welling up from the depths and engulfing me entirely, heavy with resentment I move about the hou
se, feeling it kicking inside me like a developed fetus, how had I allowed him to take over slice after slice of my life, how had I abandoned my studies because of his nagging jealousy, you already have one degree, he would complain, why do you have to hang round the university as if you haven’t got a baby at home, how had I given up my girlfriends, he was sure they were inciting me against him, I would always arrive at my gettogethers with them with tears in my eyes, because of a quarrel he would deliberately provoke when I was already at the door, and little by little I grew accustomed to this isolation, just him and me and later Noga, and my work which he also viewed with skepticism, a kind of imprisonment which I came to accept, which became almost pleasant, to live without temptation, without stimulation, and it seemed to me that if it was easy for me to renounce things they obviously weren’t important in the first place. Why was it so convenient for me to renounce my power, to yield to his will which was always stronger than mine, even before the guilt which he squeezed to the last drop, like an orange, even before that I lived in a constant state of apology, shrinking from my beauty instead of basking in it, and now what’s left of it, not much, not enough for what I need for the rest of my life. But the thought of the rest of my life is so threatening that I kick it violently away, what has it to do with me, just let me get through this hour, and the one waiting after it, which will wipe it out immediately, every hour wipes out the one before it, every new day its predecessor, that’s the only reason they arrive, meekly offering themselves, days nobody needs, for our house is closed, no one comes in and no one goes out, only my mother sometimes goes down to the store, and the thud of her steps on the stairs makes me tremble, like the turning of the key in the door, like the rustle of the plastic bags on the kitchen table, but I look at her and keep quiet, all three of us are silent most of the time, only the most essential words escape with difficulty from our dry mouths, like corks from narrow bottles of wine, preferring to disintegrate inside their necks rather than to expose themselves. Even the washing machine is still, and the telephone too hardly ever rings, and if anyone does call, mainly from work, my mother announces in a firm voice that I am ill, convincing even me, and I go to sleep with a vague feeling of incipient illness hesitating between my throat and my back, my stomach and my head, Udi come back, I mumble, Udi come back. Early in the morning he always answers my pleas, tiptoes into the dark room, wakes me from a hard sleep and throws his gifts at me, usually he brings shoes, three pairs of identical sandals and two pairs of slippers, all for him and not for me, and I ask him, what do you need all this for, I just bought you sandals, and he laughs happily, he’s so happy that I don’t want to spoil it, I laugh with him at the joke, five pairs of shoes on one night, what a fine harvest, and in the morning I wake up in a disappointment that gradually shrinks, at first it fills me to bursting, stretching my skin like a balloon, but little by little it disperses through the house, slips through the cracks in the shutters, until the alarm clock infects me for a moment with its joy, at last I’m not disturbing anyone.