Lovers and Strangers

by David Grossman

  Shaul thinks perhaps he does not always completely understand her either, but he, in contrast, knows how to expand his palm at these moments to contain her entire face and all its conflicts, and with patience and wisdom he suppresses the frightened motions until she is silent, breathing warm air into his hand, and then, slowly, he begins to give her face back to her, restoring each feature to its proper place, redrawing its boundaries, smoothing it over and feeling her clenched body loosen and relax, and his heart fills— What happened to her? Where had she taken him without his comprehending? How is she able continually to surprise and excite him, as if a nervous wing fluttered constantly inside her? Even after all their years together, he still cannot understand how such a small wing can move all of him, rock and stir all two hundred pounds of him and melt away his cynical sobriety. Shaul thinks and swallows; he opens his eyes, which he had screwed shut as if to violently crush the drops of these scenes out of them, and now he lies drained.

  Just another moment, not yet, it’s hard to let go. Now Elisheva turns around and faces him, curling up to his chest, exhausted by what had shaken her a moment ago. Her eyes close and she almost falls asleep, but the man does not let her, he props himself up on his elbow and leans over her and demands to know what that was before, what had frightened her so much. She replies: I don’t know, I suddenly got very scared. And he, somewhat critically: But of what? She, wearily: I really don’t know. And he, almost hurt: Then why didn’t you say anything? Why do you always turn inward like that without telling me how I can help? And she whispers, with a smile, that he knows exactly how to help, that no one in the world can help as well as he does, that she was simply incapable of speaking. You know, she says later, how sometimes when you’re making love, you reach a state that you simply can’t contain? When you just can’t say anything more? Well, that’s what happened to me now, but the grief … I don’t know, something scared me suddenly, made me shrink away, I don’t know. And the man nods in astonishment, believing that she doesn’t know and that she cannot give a more detailed explanation now, and this too makes him love her even more, her inarticulateness at such moments. She rests her head on his chest again, light now. She has suffered and disconnected herself, and now she is purring with soft delight, Shaul thinks, and says to himself carefully, as if reciting: This is a pleasure I do not know, a pleasure awakened in her only when she is with him. There is a substance expressed into the heart only in the presence of one particular person and never in the presence of another, he thinks, and Elisheva’s eyes are still closed as she breathes lightly. You remember I’m going away tomorrow, she mumbles into his chest, drugged by the sweetness.

  Mmm … he confirms.

  Silence.

  Four days? He checks again. That’s a long time.

  To be alone, she daydreams. Four days all by myself.

  Wouldn’t you like me to come?

  Her eyes open. He feels her eyelashes moving on his chest hairs and knows the look without seeing it.

  He sighs, and they both curl into themselves, carrying together for a moment the burden of the impossible complication of her life. The duplicity which divides her. The never-ending noise inside her head. A hive of secrets and lies. Sometimes she can’t understand how she’s even capable of feeling anything toward either one of them.

  He smiles. Maybe you’ll meet someone there, you never know.

  She prods his shoulder with her nose. Now you’re starting too?

  The man wrinkles his forehead. Is he already losing his temper?

  He’s going out of his mind, she says. Every year I think, Enough, this time he’ll take it easy, get used to it, it’s only four days, I don’t—

  He presses her to the side of his body, mending with his big hand what Shaul breaks. He sighs deeply.

  She struggles not to tell him everything. Tries to maintain Shaul’s dignity. Inside her burns the internal wire she stretches out anew every minute, the borderline between her two men. The man listens with his eyes shut. Every so often he nods his head sorrowfully.

  This morning when I started packing, she finally bursts out, he came up close to me like this—she hesitates, then touches her lips to his big ear and whispers. Shaul cannot hear her, though he knows only too well what happened that morning and what he threw into her open suitcase, and yet his soul stands on its tiptoes, straining to hear what exactly is being whispered about him there, how and with which words he is described, between her mouth and his ear.

  Silence. The man’s quiet eyes fill with violent darkness. Elisheva places a calming hand on his chest.

  They had already left the Tel Aviv road and were heading south, and Shaul hesitated to tell her where she was taking him; there was never a right time, and when he thought about what he’d say and how he’d explain it all, it seemed groundless, an utter delusion. Finally he leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes with the surrender of a trapped animal, but every time he opened them he saw her profile in front of him, and the memory came back to him with a piercing sense as if for the first time. Their silence now held an explicit, almost rude declaration of animosity as they tried, unconsciously, to pretend they were two distinct species, with no affinity of genus or of prey between them, and after a half hour of driving they were exhausted.

  Her jaw ached from her increasing exasperation at him and at Micah, at the way Micah fawned over Shaul, which was the reason for her being here. But if once in a blue moon he asks me for something … Micah had mumbled, rendered almost mute by the fact that Shaul had even made contact with him, that he even knew their number. Esti, hanging laundry up on the porch, heard only Micah’s side of the conversation, his exclamations of sorrow and shock at something terrible that had happened to Shaul the day before (but you always hear only one side, she thought). Micah kept asking questions, in his characteristic way—he always interrupted any story he was told with a series of questions meant to prove to the narrator his level of interest and sympathy and, above all, his boundless loyalty. But Shaul never allowed himself to be interrupted, and with a few short words he had stemmed the flood of emotion even as it rushed at him; she saw Micah stymied, shrinking, tongue-tied, and she already felt insulted on his behalf and furious at Shaul, though despite herself she was somewhat excited by his ability to be so aggressive. Two minutes after Micah put the phone down, the call came from Environmental Control.

  She sucked in dense air through her pursed lips. How would she have the energy to drive after such a long day? Who knew how long this would take? And then she’d probably have to take him back from wherever-they-were-going to Jerusalem, then back home to Kfar-Saba. Why was she even playing along with this idiotic mystery? She wondered hazily whether they might go through Beersheba, her hometown, and Shaul breathed heavily, absorbing the blow of a new wave of pain. He hoped something would happen to him soon, that he’d faint or lose consciousness before they reached the end of the road, but he didn’t even dare to sleep in her presence, in the shadow of her Indian profile, its heavy chin and ample black hair. She had once brought them a painting, when Tom was born—he couldn’t say whether she’d painted it or cooked it or baked it; it was made with paprika and cumin and curry powder on rough recycled paper and depicted a mother and child who resembled her far more than Elisheva and Tom. He also recalled that for years her scent wafted out from the painting every time he got near it, because sometimes, though not tonight, she had a clear, strong body odor that she did not bother to mask. Shaul wondered how his brother could be undisturbed by it, and remembered what his mother had said about it when Micah announced he was marrying her—she’d even spoken of her scent, that’s how far she had gone! Now he grew even angrier at Esti because of this nonsense flitting around in his mind and breaking his concentration, and Esti hummed to herself quietly, briskly. Shira’s uniform was waiting for her on the ironing board, she had to sew ranks onto three shirts, the twins’ knight costumes had to be ready for kindergarten tomorrow; she still had not grasped tha
t in front of her lay a long, open road, that she did not even know their destination. She had not yet sensed the pea beneath the pile of mattresses, the pea that belonged to the little brown-skinned girl who used to make up stories to keep her soul pinned down inside her or, at times, to let it fly—stories whose most exciting element was the word “suddenly” at the beginning of every sentence and before each description: Suddenly, suddenly, her heart would leap when she whispered to herself, suddenly.

  And where was Elisheva? she thought. Why wouldn’t he say where she was? Maybe he’d done something to her. She glanced in the mirror, dimly saw the red bruise beneath his right eye, and as always when their eyes met in the mirror, they drew back from each other as if at the touch of a stranger’s fingernail. He really looks as if he’s murdered someone, she thought. The idea had crossed her mind when she’d been in their house, grounds for her invasion of the rooms. Because if not—she raised an eyebrow—why was he being so secretive? She stretched out and clicked her tongue. She gave him a long look. Just the day before yesterday she had seen him on television, giving an interview about the budget cuts for science education. He was sharp and witty, utterly persuasive in the venomous dryness with which he tore the Treasury people to shreds. The subject matter itself was of no interest to her, but as always when she caught him on screen, she followed his expressions closely, on the lookout for what he was so wonderful at concealing in public. Calm down, she thought, and rubbed her tense neck, he didn’t murder her. He can’t move an inch without her. And he’s too much of a coward. Her pupils lengthened like cat eyes in the greenish light coming from the instrument panel. She liked to imagine spousal murders, it was a little trick she employed to spark some curiosity and even affection toward couples she was otherwise unable to warm to: she would imagine them creeping up on each other silently, lying in wait and prowling through the thickets of their domestic savannas. Sometimes during boring evenings at friends’ houses, she’d sit with the contemplative determination of a worm in a juicy apple and slowly examine possible murder weapons: a heavy Murano glass fruit bowl, a cheese knife with a Delft china handle, nutcrackers, bottle openers … Shaul saw her strange, scheming smile. His scattered look lingered on it for a moment, and they experienced a brief, clear encounter, of which they were unaware. As if he had wasted precious time, he shut his eyes and removed himself from everything, focusing inward, on one murky shaft of light, and in the dark, damp window in front of him his face was reflected, revealing a shimmering image of Elisheva

  Running on a white hillside, running fast, her movements sharp, cutting through the dark, her light pants torn at the hems—perhaps they had caught on a thorn. He almost yells in amazement at the sight of her there, but summons all his strength to keep quiet so the driver won’t see her. Because now there is a man driving. At midnight the phone had rung and a voice had informed him that his wife was missing. Gone. No one knew where or why. The voice even had a vaguely accusatory tone, as if Shaul were to blame for her disappearance. He listened quietly. The man said they were sending someone to bring him. He didn’t even ask where to. There must be a search party, he thought foggily. He reached a sleepy hand out to her side of the bed and found it vacant, and only then seemed to comprehend and sat up quickly. The man told him to get ready, then hung up, and he sat and stared. Since when do the police notify a family that someone is missing? Usually it’s the other way around, isn’t it? A moment later there was a knock at the door: a fat, thick man with smooth, short, dolphin-like hands. Like the hands of the man who installed the intercom that connects Elisheva’s day-care center on the ground floor to his study. He followed him silently to a filthy, battered Subaru, not even a police car, and got into the backseat and huddled there without saying a word. That was how they drove south for a long time, until he suddenly saw her running on the hill opposite him, light, swallowed up in the darkness and then emerging a moment later on another hill, so quick, rushing with thin, brisk motions like a fingerling in a night ocean, and around her were dozens of eyes she did not notice—red, sparkling, lighting up as she passed them. Now her thin blouse catches on the branch of a low tree and is torn away, and she is left wearing his favorite white bra, from which she knows how to seductively remove a pure, warm breast for him, longing to be sucked by his mouth. Why doesn’t she turn around and see him and be rescued? All she has to do is just look at him and he’ll reach out and save her, but she doesn’t, she must not want to, she wants to go on running—that much is clear—she doesn’t even feel she needs to be saved from anything, she enjoys being alone, moving rapidly … Her legs move up and down, her face leans forward, her body suddenly so strong—who knew she had this kind of strength in her? Running almost naked, peeled away, soon the bra too, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t tire, glimmers in the shadows that lurk around her as if the tips of her exposed nerves were producing electricity. She floats with incomprehensible ease, light of body, but also with a certain lightheadedness, and then, precisely at that moment, a new shadow, elongated, silently emerges from behind one of the rocks and a large, supple, alert body starts running after her

  Shaul let out a moan of amazement and shook his head: Not yet, there’s still time, get out of here, get yourself out, quickly. He glanced at Esti and wondered if he’d made any suspicious sounds, but she was lost in her own thoughts as she drove, nodding at some reflection, and he thought distractedly that from here, from this angle, she definitely had an impressive face—not beautiful but strong, a hardworking face, which led him to notice a tiny, round earring he had not observed before, like the cheap jewelry a girl would wear, he thought vaguely, a girl playing by herself on the sidewalk; he went on staring at the glittering gold in her earlobe, drawn to it with a strange sense of emptying out, and slowly but surely he relaxed.

  Then, for no reason, their conversation flowed with ease for a few moments. Shaul asked her about the kids. He said the names of Shira and Eran, and added Na’ama’s name with a certain effort. He can’t remember the twins’ names, Esti thought, and she knew that five kids must be a sign of vulgarity for him, a kind of bad taste, like someone putting five spoonfuls of sugar in their coffee. But the thought that he couldn’t remember the names of his brother’s children also aroused a certain flutter of compassion toward him, and she decided to try to stop fighting him, at least for the duration of the journey, to stop constantly settling scores with him in her heart and being insulted by his alienation from the family. This night was already a lost cause anyway, she thought, might as well get some good out of it. So she answered his hesitant questions and expanded with stories about the kids, repeating their names over and over to help him connect the names with the children. She also threw in something of each child’s personality, spending a little more time on her Ido, the smaller twin, perhaps because he sometimes reminded her of Shaul, although he looked nothing like him—he was the only one of them who had some of her coloring—but even so, in the fragility, the distance, the thread of dejected absentmindedness that lingered in him, which sometimes pinched her heart with a vague sense of guilt.