Lovers and Strangers

by David Grossman

  Their most beautiful moments are when they are both calm, he thinks. His heart twinges and he longs to portray them for her as they are during those times, in all their beauty, to describe them in such a way that she will not be able to resist them—because they are irresistible, he repeats to himself—but how can he tell her?

  During those moments of calm, he knows, they can imagine that they have time, that they do not have to give in at once to their urge, that urge which is so human and so understandable, he thinks with pursed lips, the urge to throw their bodies against and inside one another, to dig and burrow into each other, breathlessly rising and falling as they have done almost every day for ten years, with desperate dizziness, needing to squeeze every last drop out of their precious moments of closeness, every cell in their bodies an open mouth to kiss and suck and lick and bite.

  He shuts his eyes, and as if he were pulling a book from a crowded shelf, he chooses one such day, when they are completely at ease. He holds the day in his hands and opens it up. He thinks of them relaxed, demilitarized. They are so different when they have time, when they’re not tense and disappointed before they’ve even begun, because they know they’ll have to rush. Their movements are different, their breaths, even their expressions. How can he tell her? How can he sneak across the border to the outside?

  His hand lies softly on her bare stomach. For Shaul, this stomach represents the furnace of her femininity; he has no idea what it means to the other man. He sees the hand, the fingers, the ring, the stomach. He needs the picture to be slow and precise. And he wants to see it through Elisheva’s eyes, from within her and using her words. “Lingering,” for example, is a word of hers that fits here. She once knew how to linger, she often laments. She had great patience and the stillness to observe. Then she too became loaded with burdens and nuisances, and now she is like Shaul, like everyone, scampering around, constantly robbed. But when she is there, everything within her relaxes and protracts. Time—those fifty-something minutes—unfolds more and more hidden creases, the very same time which then freezes in Shaul’s veins.

  And you have to see where each and every finger is positioned, he thinks, the way his thick little finger rests on the evasive line between her hip and her thigh. Another brushes over her hairline. Touching this place always arouses her, and he too, her man, must know this, although of course he may use a completely different touch to arouse her, in places no other man could even imagine, and with acts no other man has dared commit even though the desire is great. Such a man might like, for example, to traverse her entire body with little kisses down to the soles of her feet, to wrap his lips around her plump white toes, one after the other, very slowly, sealing his lips over each of them and sucking gently but persistently, then to run his tongue around each toe, biting it lightly and sensing its feathery down bristle, things Shaul has been passionately longing to do for years but has never dared, because it is not for him—it is for her and her man, and deep in his heart he knows that it is far more appropriate for them than for himself and her. He no longer asks himself why this is or when it was decreed—there would be no point in pursuing that question. That is simply how things were decided in some distant place, in that way in which delicate matters such as these are normally determined and sealed: a man simply knows what belongs to him and what does not, and the act of slowly licking and sucking her toes does not belong to him, period. Much like the journey in the opposite direction, during which he might have sharply but gently bitten her ankles, still beautiful and refined, then ascended with those same nibbles up to her calves, where he could have made circles with his tongue around the pinkish dimples behind her knees. But he prefers not to think of that now, not today, because today they are relaxed, she and her man, completely still but for that one finger of his that traces light circles on her quivering skin. It’s the finger with the silver ring she bought him on the fifth anniversary of their love. She bought two identical ones, and she wears hers only there, in the apartment. How can he tell her?

  Esti looks for him in the mirror but does not find him, and for a moment she is alone in the car, in another time, and for a moment there is a strange silence and there is tranquillity, and a hidden door that opens just a crack. She takes a bottle of water from her bag and twists the cap off with her teeth, and then his voice comes from behind her again. He is here. Mumbling to himself with his bowed head rocking a little. But she doesn’t listen. She gently disconnects from him as she would unravel her fingers from those of a sleeping child. Delicate feelers stir within her: her refugee senses pick up warmth, the scent of a beloved body, a deep, scorched voice, and loud heartbeats that she can still hear sometimes, even after twenty years, even in a crowded street, like a faraway drumming, and she starts to fervently search around herself, barely able to stop herself from calling out the name.

  His finger now hovers over her sunken navel, Shaul can see, and his fleshy thumb sinks lightly into the soft pillow of her stomach. These delicate touches awaken whispers and currents above and beneath her skin, and she contains their motion within her as she lies still, her eyes closed and her pupils clinging to her translucent eyelids. He has only to simply flutter his finger from her navel down to her hairline, barely touching, for the fire to instantly consume her, and perhaps this is what he will do, because deep inside he has not yet completely accepted her desire to lie absolutely quietly beside each other today. Just be together, Elisheva says without opening her eyes. Just recharge, she mumbles, picturing an intravenous drip of quietude and solace—“solace” is such a lovely word for her, Shaul thinks—for both of them, he revises. How blissful for us to find fulfillment together in the power of mere closeness, in merely knowing that I am lying beside him, that my body is satiated—not from the satisfaction of passion, but simply from the sweetness of knowing that he is with me quietly, leisurely, belonging, in this pleasure that gushes up from the heart and boils over and spills onto the sheets, requiring almost no touch, no bodily division, with the silent knowledge that we are a mature man and woman, full of love.

  Shaul moans to himself, and Esti hears the moan and perks up. He is sprawled with his face buried in the rough, slightly dusty upholstery, his chest rapidly rising and falling. It has taken him years of drilling down through his thoughts to be capable of reaching this stage, this stratum, where he can hold them together like this for almost a whole hour, an entire encounter, without having them lunge at each other. When he was finally able to do this, he realized he had lost her forever. It was difficult for him to explain this even to himself, but he vaguely sensed that if she and the man were capable of being in a state of utter calm, without passionately throwing themselves at each other, this must mean that he, Shaul, had lost her. And his pain is no duller even now, when he sees them like this, taut—but unlike a drawn bow with its arrow—floating in the warm fluids of illusion as if they had plenty of time for themselves, as if when these fifty minutes were over, another eternity of long hours would naturally follow, more days and nights would come—yes, surely, another whole night together, something he believes they have never had for almost the entire life of their love.

  Perhaps at the beginning they did, he whispers suddenly into the seat. Perhaps at the beginning they did what? she asks. Perhaps—at the beginning—they—had—a night. He leaps suicidally into her arms as they open for him. An entire—night—together. He is excited to hear the words outside himself for the first time, and watches them full of wonder as they float like shimmering bubbles of poison. Perhaps when they first started, when I still used to do reserve duty in Julis, he says, and waits for his heart to calm down and thinks he won’t be able to take it. Although even when I was on duty there, I almost always managed to get away and come home at night, he chokes, and Esti bites her lip, afraid to even look at him so as not to break the thin web. Just to get three or four hours of sleep at home next to her, he ruminates with a flooded heart. Just to lie close to her body and fill myself up with her breath. He s
huts his eyes and his entire body clings to her womanly flesh, which even in sleep brings the promise that tomorrow, as if straight out of her body, the sun will shine. And don’t forget Tom, he reminds Esti hoarsely. After all, she couldn’t possibly have left him alone there for a whole night, you know what a crazy mother she is. No—he waves his hand—it’s completely against her nature to do something like that. I mean, to wait until Tom falls asleep and then leave the house? No, she didn’t do that, he determines. Although, on the other hand, she could have waited until the boy fell asleep and then phoned Paul to come over—

  Paul? Esti asks quietly.

  Yes, that’s his name.

  He’s not Israeli?

  Not really, it’s a long story. He’s Russian, but his family is from France.

  Go on, I didn’t mean to interrupt—

  He falls quiet again and tries to understand how he can be saying these things, how it can be that his dark words are coming out into the light and yet he is still alive. At once he storms the doorway that has suddenly opened for him in the endless corridor in which he has been bumping around for years; words spill out, cut off, confused, ashamed, squeezing out. But it’s so unlike Elisheva, he mumbles, to do something like that. I mean, to bring Paul into our house. What if Tom had woken up suddenly and come to the bedroom in tears? No, of this he absolved her almost completely, always, and it is important to him that Esti knows that even inside the chaos of their revealed and hidden lives, he knows that Elisheva is an honest person, the most honest person he knows, and that she is even loyal, in her own way. This is truly difficult to explain, and he finds it strange that Esti is quiet now and does not ask him anything about it, as if she understands on her own that such a contradiction is possible. And it’s absolutely clear to me, he says, that a person less honest than Elisheva would not be so tormented by these transitions—

  What transitions? she asks, confused.

  The transitions, you know, between me and him, when she comes and goes, back and forth …

  Yes, Esti pipes up, that is the most difficult part, the transitions …

  That’s the paradox, he continues, that because of her absolute honesty she probably has to pursue this lousy situation, because she just cannot be dishonest in her soul, you see, she cannot give up her great love … He stops and chokes down the gall of his words. Look, it’s not easy for me to make peace with this, it’s hard for me to even think of it, but this love must be worth all the suffering.

  It’s not suffering, says Esti softly, it’s torture—think of how torn she is. Honestly, I can’t understand how she takes it.

  That’s exactly what I’m saying: what she has with him must be worth the suffering for her. And maybe it’s me who is the redundant one, he mumbles to himself. But you know her, he adds, she would never take a drastic step that might hurt me—how can I even use the word “hurt”? he sniggers, the bitterness in his mouth tasting like cyanide. It would destroy me. Annihilate me into dust.

  In the dense space of the car she feels slightly dizzy, because of the warm streams emitted by the body lying behind her, and because of the inside of that body, which seems to be tearing apart and disgorging its burning contents, and she cannot follow all of Shaul’s words. How difficult it must be, she thinks, to live with such a strain. And that is also why being with him always feels so oppressive. She’s just so right for him, Shaul groans. Do you see what I’m up against? Esti nods, unable to utter a word—what could she say? What can one say? That’s the thing, he whispers, there is something between them that cannot be canceled out or denied. It’s as if she were born for him, he says with indescribable effort, and feels contaminated and miserable and yet freed in a way he has never felt before, and he extracts the words from within himself and places them one by one at her feet. Sometimes I think to myself that it was just their bad luck, or even a tragic error of some sort, that she and he did not— Esti lowers her head and silently begs him to take a break and let her breathe. How can he say such things? And how can she sit and listen to them as if nothing had happened? As if she didn’t even recognize the words and the pangs and the sting of longing. She lets out a weak, crushed sigh. How could she be acting like Joseph, who denied knowing his brothers even as he yearned to get up and hug them and shout, It’s me! And that voice, she listens, it’s not at all his normal voice; this slightly reserved, ironic tone is something completely different, from another place … She is almost tempted to shut her eyes to the road: she has perfect pitch, not for music, but for human voices, and with the subtlety of a wine taster she can discern every nuance of tone. His voice is now replete and dark, as he paints for her a distant, wintry place, perhaps a forest covered with a thin layer of frost, a large tree trunk slowly burning in its midst, silently, occasionally making soft crackling sounds of pain.

  She becomes more agitated toward him and against him and with him, and knows that she is opening up now in a new place, unfolding to him with the thirst of a student, and even if she does not understand exactly what he is teaching or what the topic of the lesson is, something inside her whispers that she is in the right place, faraway in a school basement, in a dark and vehemently denied little room; only a few believe in its existence, and only they can be drawn to it and are worthy of participating in the class always in session there, at all hours of the day and night, even when not a single student is present.

  Tell me, how is it possible, he says—the thought always strikes him in the same way, from the same exact angle and always for the first time—how is it possible to grasp that this woman, my wife, my one and only true love, has not missed a single meeting with the man for the last ten years? Except maybe once or twice a year on her sick days or when there was a family event, a war here and there, trips abroad or out of town—days when she absolutely couldn’t go out and maintain her life with him. Shaul deliberately uses that turn of phrase: “maintain her life with him.” The words burn every time, but honesty forces him to say them even when he’s talking with Esti. He has not believed for a long time that Elisheva was going out only “to meet with him.” Because he knew very well that there was something far deeper between them than a mere “meeting,” and certainly more than a fleeting sexual encounter—although that undoubtedly does occur almost every day, he notes diligently. After all, they are a normal man and woman, he snickers, and as he speaks those last words, a flame is ignited within him, and for the first time he directs its blaze at another person, and Esti feels it and rushes to protect herself from the sudden violent gust, the likes of which she has never known, as it lunges at her from the fluttering man behind her. She knows she must save herself, but does not know exactly from what, and is not even sure she really wants to be saved and banished this soon from the private master class. She fears that if she does not pull herself together at once, she may not have the strength later on to withstand the strange assault which now attacks her in waves with a kind of impersonal insistence, almost inhuman, or perhaps insufferably human. Practically yelling, she bursts out, I don’t understand, Shaul, stop for a minute, I can’t grasp anything anymore. I thought for a second that … No, you’ve got me completely confused. Start over, please.

  And now it’s a little easier for him. He doesn’t know how it happened, but the path seems to have been paved, and all he has to do now is follow it over and over again until it is conquered, and for an instant he even contemplates the possibility that the pleasure of keeping a secret and the pleasure of revealing it are perhaps not so distant from each other. He explains that Elisheva, in her special circumstances, must be very efficient and businesslike because of those transitions. After all, she didn’t use to be like that, he smiles forlornly, and Esti nods and sees the dreamy Elisheva of the past, frightened by large department stores, bungling tip calculations in restaurants, standing with a little street map, her brow furrowed, deliberating over which is her right hand; she is filled with longing for Elisheva again, for the days when everyone was still together. Even Sha
ul had been with them back then, in his own way, of course, kicking out now and then, but at least he was within kicking distance. As he continues talking, she recalls a distant sunny afternoon in her garden, when Tom was little and Shira and Eran were still babies. She sees Shaul and Micah playing ball with them, then forgetting about the little ones and horsing around with each other—Shaul happy as he dribbles the ball with a skill that surprises her and deceives Micah, Elisheva sprawling in a deck chair, full and soft and golden, smiling at him. She had huge sunglasses back then, Esti remembers, like Sophia Loren; she had asked her to go and buy them with her. When she smiles at Shaul, he seems to lose his balance for a second, then raises his arms and links his hands over his head in victory. He snatches up Tom and lifts him onto his shoulders and charges around the lawn with him. His parents and Micah watch Shaul and the boy with a longing that Esti did not understand at the time, and still cannot decipher in all its subtleties. They seemed to be praying for Tom to serve as a kind of appeals court, she now thinks, where they would win Shaul back, or perhaps gain him for the first time.

  As if he had been listening to every word that passed through her mind, Shaul blurts out that everything has changed so much, and that you don’t get used to something like this; that every time he thinks about it, it destroys him to comprehend that his wife—and here he stops and withdraws, my wife, he thinks, amazed, as if pronouncing the words for the first time, my wife, and for a moment he sees the words hover above him with his very own eyes, these words that enter the world gnawed, he feels, always surrounded by a ring of tooth marks— Where was I? he mutters, and Esti reminds him, and he whispers that he can never grasp that Elisheva has been maintaining an entire life with another man for at least ten years, fifty-odd minutes a day. These are fleeting moments, to be sure, but when I think about some of the couples I know, he says, there seem to be some who don’t even have that daily time together, certainly not with a focus that is so … what’s the word, so concentrated, and all the more so because Elisheva—and here a little smile lights up his face, making it almost beautiful for a moment—can be very intense with all her excitement and storminess and her moods and her enthusiasm. But here Esti disagrees, because her Elisheva was always remarkably tranquil, and that was also why she had so loved to be with her. No, no, he protests, as if all her thoughts are transparent to him, you can’t imagine how stormy she can be, really pressurized, or at least she used to be when we were first together, before she started sharing her energies with another person. And when I think of it like that, he sighs, I can certainly see—I can imagine, I mean—how she in fact maintains her life with him. Esti, with limp and bloodless lips, asks how, and Shaul says dryly, as if slicing out thin and very crisp words, Listen, it’s a life that has not even one moment of waste or boredom, or of fatigue, you know, because of tiredness or indifference, or just getting sick of each other. With them it’s the opposite, he declares. Every moment of theirs is electrically charged and full of interest and passion. It’s an intense life, he determines, and after a minute, as if a confession has been wrested from him, he adds, A full life.