Lovers and Strangers

by David Grossman

  And she asked about Tom—she had always thought something bad might one day emerge from that boy—and Shaul told her about the math studies at the Sorbonne and the grants Tom was collecting there, sifting any hint of pride or satisfaction out of his voice. As he spoke, she could see Tom sitting in some gloomy library, his too large head weighing down on his thin neck, and she wanted to ask something but thought better of it.

  And does Eran have a girlfriend already? Shaul inquired, and Esti, though she suspected he was just trying to distract her from Tom, or rushing so he could sink back into that stormy internal mumbling, was happy to talk about Eran’s sweet young girl. She joked about how they had already set up a family room in the house, up in the attic, and how Micah was of course nervous about it, he thought seventeen was too early, but nowadays everyone starts everything early. Then she caught herself and said, Well, not everyone, of course, everyone has their own pace. Shaul nodded, touched by her understanding. He said he kept hoping it was only his lousy long-bachelorhood genes, and that eventually someone would move in on Tom too, the way Elisheva had on him. Esti smiled and said she had those genes too, in fact, and Shaul said, So what are you saying—that someone like Micah may end up moving in on him? And it was a joke, but it wasn’t, because they both knew that Tom might have that in him too. Their eyes met in the mirror, which for a fleeting moment displayed possibilities, his and hers, and wishes and longings and complications that had long ago been covered with thick layers of life’s dust, and Esti blinked first and looked away, sensing that in his current situation he was actually capable of seeing more, even seeing too much. She slid him a quick, misleading smile in the mirror, teeth shining, and Shaul again recalled the first time his brother had introduced her to him: It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Twenty years, Esti noted, I was almost twenty-nine when we met. Shaul was amazed and said feebly that she had hardly changed, and she threw her head back and laughed from the bottom of her heart, knowing that he sincerely believed she had gone through all those years and all those kids without changing. He saw only general concepts, she once explained to Micah, only silhouettes. But now, with his gaze surrounding her, it seemed to her that he’d already completely given up the possibility of breaking through his shell and truly knowing anything outside himself. But your hair was braided then, wasn’t it? he suddenly exclaimed, and she was touched that he remembered. My beautiful braid, she said, and slid her hand down her neck and shoulder. Shaul looked enchanted at the soft motion of her hand, and it was the same thing every time he remembered any concrete detail from the distant past: a strange sense of gratitude spread through him, melting, as if he had managed to acquire further evidence that might help him one day, in some future debate, when he would be required to prove that there had been moments of fertilization between him and life itself. Sure, he said, you had a long braid, kind of thick. He latched onto this memory and refused to let go, and Esti guessed what he was going through—she, who was unable to forget anything, who remembered every word anyone said to her, and gestures and voices and smells—and she drew him into the conversation and reminded him how nervous Micah had been at that first meeting, how afraid she was of Shaul’s stern judgment; I felt as if he were presenting me to a Supreme Court judge. She suddenly turned serious: You know, your parents’ house was a true refuge for me, an absolute salvation. She hesitated over whether she could even tell him that only when she got to his parents’ house did she truly understand what a home and a family were, but Shaul was thinking of his mother’s shout-and-whisper performance when it transpired that Micah was uncharacteristically determined to marry “that woman of his,” and for a moment he wondered how Esti had in fact overcome his mother’s deep, almost pagan, animosity. If he had not been embarrassed, he would have asked her what magic she had worked on her to make his mother so devoted to her now, and Esti smiled to herself and thought perhaps it was a good thing after all that she had agreed to take this trip.

  They went on talking with the newfound playfulness of two people who have somehow managed to avoid an unpleasant confrontation, although Esti noticed that even when he was laughing with her and seemingly swept up in the memories of his parents’ house, Shaul still held them both back from completely giving in to the sweetness of the small details, cautious not to let the conversation go beyond the small talk of two acquaintances who had once been, say, to summer camp together. Or to a concentration camp, Shaul thought, and Esti saw his long, tortured face in the mirror, and for a moment was unable to look away from it and from his lips, which moved constantly as if he were conducting another stormy conversation within himself, one that existed independently of the conversation with her. At once she was struck by a sense of sorrow, and she wondered whether he was truly close to anyone, whether there was anyone in the world who coincided with him on some parallel line.

  Apart from Elisheva, of course, she later thought with some effort.

  She reached out and rummaged quickly through the large handbag on the passenger seat, and offered Shaul the sandwiches she had made and wrapped before leaving; she also had fruit and vegetables and hard-boiled brown eggs, two vanilla puddings, and a wedge of Camembert in a little cooler, and a tin full of her famous sesame cookies. Shaul looked on in wonderment as she fumbled in the bag and produced one piece of food after another, while still driving in a perfectly straight line, and he remembered the instant of last night’s accident and complained that he had no appetite. Esti used her teeth to unwrap a sandwich for herself and hesitated for a moment, knowing how she would feel when she chewed and the sound was magnified in her head, but she shrugged her shoulders and ate it anyway, with enjoyment, then picked out some black olives and drank coffee from a flask. Shaul inhaled the smells of the food and the coffee aroma, and although his appetite was aroused, he decided not to ask for anything, imposing a little fine on himself for not accepting when she had first offered. Esti wiped her lips and asked for the third or fourth time how he could even travel with such a new fracture, and he assured her the Tramadol was already kicking in, only the itching was driving him crazy, the ants, and he hissed that even the worst pain in the world would not be punishment enough for such a stupid accident. She asked again where exactly it had happened, and he said, I can hardly remember, I was driving, I was driving home, I ran into a sidewalk—she felt compelled to flick the radio on to disperse the burden of his lie.

  They listened quietly to the nine o’clock news. At the end, to Shaul’s astonishment, the newswoman adopted the amused tone of voice that always signifies trivial anecdotes or minor catastrophes befalling other nations to report on a senior police officer in Spain, a well-known and respected man: only after he had passed away this week had it been revealed that he had two families living in different suburbs of Madrid, who knew nothing of one another. He had two wives, the newswoman said cheerfully, and six children with each of them, and he had given them all the same names, in parallel. Oh! Esti laughed. Two identical sets—just imagine! Shaul said, Imagine what, and his voice was too quick, like a snakebite. Hesitating, she said, Imagine such a thing, and he said gloomily, That I can actually imagine. She said nothing for a moment, then asked cautiously, Is something wrong, Shaul? He looked up heavily and stared at her with torn eyes, and suddenly moaned with such pain that Esti slammed the brakes and drove onto the shoulder and stopped. Shaul mumbled, No, no, go on, it’s only my leg. But she didn’t move, she sat very erect and waited as Shaul lay there, shriveled. A familiar storm began to brew inside him, wails and bitter whinnies interwoven into a roar that sucked his insides and threatened to slam him against the wall, any wall—after all, there must be a wall at the edge—or the bottom of a pit. How unbearably pleasurable it will be when everything is uprooted right in front of her eyes, he bitterly mocked his own misfortune. In front of her eyes would be best, he rejoiced, and then the thing inside him was cut off and sealed, and he pulled his unfractured leg to his stomach and thought, That was it, that must be what was decreed.
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  At the office, he said after a while with a hollow voice, there’s a similar story.

  Similar to what? she asked.

  Like that guy in Madrid, the police officer.

  I’m not following, she said, someone who’s also married to two wives?

  Something like that, he said, more or less. One day he discovered that his wife … that she was seeing someone.

  Well, okay, she said, that happens all the time. But some hidden womanly gauge had awakened in her and slowly began to flicker.

  No, he explained, not just someone on the side, not the usual story either, you know. He wondered if she was one of those people who said “fuck” easily. There’s something much more serious going on there. In fact—he smiled, and she heard the smile and its complicated process of production—it’s been going on for years, to this day.

  You hear that kind of thing all the time, she said, confused. There was a light, strange breeze in his voice, an oblivion creeping down her spine on soft paws.

  Then it grew quiet. A long silence, full of whispers. A light rainfall enveloped them in a thick screen. Every so often a car or truck passed them by and the Volvo rocked. Esti dimmed the headlights and stared at the side of the road. She saw blown shrubs and an old road sign lying on its side. Two white plastic cups blew around in the breeze. Shaul was still trying to save himself, straining to think what would happen after this, what would happen tomorrow morning, what she would do with what he was telling her, whether he could ever show his face to the family again, and how she herself would look at him. He kept pulling himself up straight, but his body would collapse again, and he wanted to ask her to take him home now, before disaster could strike, but he couldn’t articulate the words, he so needed her to keep driving. The end of the road was drawing him away from the semblance of his life, the way you blow a raw egg out through a tiny hole in its shell. He told himself that his catastrophe had already begun from the moment he asked someone to drive him there. How had he even had the audacity to ask someone to drive him? What had he been thinking when he called Micah? How had he thought to explain this journey to anyone? He knew that he had not been thinking at all, that he did not have the strength to postpone what was coming, that he was prey.

  But the thing here, with this couple—don’t ask … He laughed softly, and she knew that laugh of his, a sharp spurt of bitterness, self-deprecating, ominous. It’s something that’s been going on for eight, nine, maybe ten years …

  And he didn’t sense anything, the husband? she asked. Shaul said, The husband knows. In fact, it turns out he’s known about it for a very long time. Right from the beginning, probably.

  She shifted in her seat, felt she should say something just to break the silence that congealed after each of his sentences.

  Yes, absolutely, he said, though Esti was sure she hadn’t had time to ask anything. He acquiesces, the husband, but with them it’s even more complicated.

  Now she could actually feel the sharp, familiar fingernails being drawn out one after the other from a soft paw, and she was hypnotized by their movement, and asked weakly, What could be more complicated than that?

  He didn’t answer, and it seemed to her that in between sentences he was sinking into himself as if he had to search for an appropriate answer that would both reveal and conceal, in the correct proportion.

  I don’t get it, she whispered. Tell me.

  Then everything slowed down in him. His eyeballs grew heavy and seemed to harden. I’m telling it now, he thought with a strange calm—the tranquillity of the inevitable—and I’m telling it to her, of all people. Of all people, her. The terrible mistake spread like a sweet narcotic through the twisted innards of his thoughts, and he stared at the ceiling of the car and for a long moment did not breathe at all, until he felt a delicate shudder through his entire body, from the tip of his head to his toes, and he leaned his head against the cool window and closed his eyes, and slowly but surely his face relaxed and he focused inward, as if in anticipation of a naked pleasure.

  He even knows, he mumbled, every time she goes to see the other guy. He even wants to know. And he sighed. He—how can I put this—he must know, everything.

  She swallowed. Asked feebly if he wanted something to drink. He didn’t answer and she didn’t dare turn to face him. They sat this way for a long time, lost in themselves, slightly shocked, as in the moment between a blow and the pain that follows, until Shaul turned his head with immense exhaustion and met her large black eyes in the mirror, eyes that were always surrounded with shadows, and whispered that she should keep driving, there was no time to lose.

  Warmth radiated from him and enveloped the back of her neck and flowed beneath her dress. Even the plaster cast suddenly emitted fresh ripples of smell. She drove the Volvo onto the road and proceeded slowly, in a daze, and felt that she was filling up with a dust of floury stupidity that rendered her incapable of thought. She only vaguely guessed that the fact that he was even telling her these things was somehow connected to the injury; his talking reminded her of the children’s babble when they got hurt, when they would pour forth a flow of hysterical chatter. She remembered Micah telling her that Shaul never got hit and never hit anyone, even as a boy. He never fought, never broke a hand or sprained an ankle, Micah said with wonder and a hint of admiration, as if Shaul were an exquisite museum piece. Esti now imagined how in an instant yesterday his skin and flesh were torn and his bones broken. Perhaps he’s not really in control of himself now, she thought. She wanted to tell him to be careful not to say things he would regret tomorrow. But she waited, silenced, for what emerged from him, and was repelled and drawn, like eyes to a disaster.

  He sits at home and waits for her, Shaul continued; he seemed serene, but every tendon in his body was rigid. He knows exactly how long it takes her to get to his house, to the second, and he sits and accompanies her on her journey until she arrives, and knows where she parks outside the house, and how she goes up the stairs, and knows exactly how many floors (four) and how many steps—

  Esti waited for a moment, on the edge of her seat. He didn’t say the number of steps, and only this allowed her to breathe again. Because if he had said the number of steps, she would have screamed.

  So he … follows her? she asked when it was no longer possible to allow this distorted silence between them, but that was not the question she wanted to ask. Other things washed over her, and from the margins of her body, her elbow or her ankle, there also came a slight sigh of relief for Elisheva, that she had such a story in her life and that she was apparently not sick, as everyone had started to fear.

  Shaul said, What? No, he doesn’t follow her, of course not, and Esti thought he seemed angry at the question, or not at the question itself, but that another voice had intruded and prevented him from settling into his story. He doesn’t have to follow her, he mumbled: he knows. He said these words softly but with decisive confidence, like someone placing a winning card on the dark red velvet of the table.

  But how … she whispered and glanced over her shoulder, and was amazed to see in the darkness the change that had occurred in him during the last few minutes: his white face, with eyes shut, was strained and pulled forward as if seized by bold, merciless fingers. It’s not true, she thought, it can’t be, not Elisheva. He’s not talking about him and her at all, that’s just you and your screwed-up imagination. But why not, she argued—is anyone immune to it? And maybe that’s why she’s always been so sad and quiet for years now, ten years, he said. Maybe she’s hiding a huge secret like this from the whole world. She sniffled, and Shaul furrowed his brow at the sound and begged himself as if pleading with a tyrant, Shut up now, shut up, you’ve done enough damage, you won’t even be able to repair what you’ve already done.

  And what’s amazing, he continued, is that they have very little time to be together, the couple, because she leaves the house for an hour every day, an hour and ten minutes, no more, but every single day, supposedly to go to the pool,
that’s the official story, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year—

  The pool, she thought, Elisheva’s sacred daily swim. Why is he telling me this? Why hasn’t he ever told Micah? Would he even tell Micah if he were here with him instead of me? She opened the window a crack and breathed in the damp air and closed it again, as if she had done something forbidden, and asked herself if he might be flirting with her, because that was also a strange potential that now hovered around them in circles of heat. It occurred to her that this had always been there among the array of his many possibilities. There were evasive hints, stolen looks, moist and slightly surrendered—never at her, of course (it took a heart far wiser and more insightful than his to discover her, she thought as she exhaled lightly), but certainly at other women. Even so, it seemed to her that in the last few moments he had plucked some new string in her and in himself, and the image of two animals who had previously been indifferent and foreign to each other passed through her mind. They shook themselves, stomped their feet, and exhaled, as if a spark had lit up something that had been completely extinguished in them.

  And listen to something funny—he leaned forward a bit, as far as his pain and the cast would allow him, and there was no smile on his quivering face—if you deduct the time it takes for her to get there and back from the hour-and-a-bit, even though he doesn’t live far, quite close in fact, and then she has to look for parking, and climb up the stairs, and all the rest of it, before and after—how much time are we left with? Forty minutes? Fifty?

  She examined him intently for a moment and knew he was not flirting with her. She was not having that bristling reaction. But even so, there was a flirtation here, slithering like a rattlesnake, but not with her. With whom, then? she thought, upset. With whom or with what was he flirting this way? She drove without seeing the road, and once in a while she opened her mouth to ask, then closed it and swallowed. Suddenly, as if a spear aimed at her from a great distance, years ago, had finally caught up with her, she groaned with a sharp pain, and for a second or two she clasped the wheel with both hands to stick to the road, then felt the sorrow and longing spread inside her. But Shaul, she thought with alarm, as if she had abandoned him, and she looked and saw him lost in himself, cramped and twisted like a crooked hieroglyph or a damaged chromosome—