Lovers and Strangers

by David Grossman

  Nothing, Esti mumbled. It’s these pedals, sorry, I got confused.

  Shaul looked at her and straightened his broken leg a little. A crooked line formed between his eyebrows.

  Every few weeks, he said after a few minutes—and now there was the trill of a newfound boldness in his voice—she offers to shave him. For no particular reason, just so he’ll have a close shave, because he always misses a bit. He made an effort to smile as he explained, and saw Elisheva preparing a bowl with hot water and lathering his face with his ancient brush. Her tongue peeks out from between her lips as she concentrates on his upper lip, careful not to cut it, but even if she does, even if thick, dark red blood spurts out, she blots it so softly that it’s hard to tell, then goes back to running the blade over his chin and cheeks, carving him. Her face is very close to his, and she gently pushes his hand away when it reaches out to her from below. She carefully washes his warm face, pats it, and holds it between her hands. At that moment, he said, she has a smile I’m not familiar with. In fact, he whispered, that’s true of all her expressions there, when she’s with him—those are expressions I’ve never seen in her—

  Like what? she interrupted him, almost rudely.

  I don’t know, he said, but they’re definitely sharper expressions of everything, of all the emotions. Passion, obviously, but also sadness, happiness, longing …

  Esti said nothing.

  That’s the way it is, he explained what she knew in every cell of her body. Even when she’s with him she misses him. Or misses being with him somewhere else, or in a different state. And he sighs: You know, I sometimes sit at home and count the minutes and think, Maybe today she’ll be home five minutes earlier. Maybe today, for a change, they’ll have had enough a little earlier, one minute earlier. And it’s never yet happened, do you understand? Ten years, and it’s never yet happened to them.

  In an instant of enchanting illusion, her vision became blurred and she herself was Elisheva, driving to the man’s house in her little Polo, sewing up the margins of the night with little bright green stitches. You know, she said after a while, I’ve never heard you talk like this.

  I never do talk like this. And he gave her a long look and bit his lip with a tiny gesture of loneliness. I can’t even comprehend yet that I’m really talking.

  That’s exactly how I feel, she murmured. As if I’m somehow reading your mind.

  He nodded. They were quiet. That’s it, she thought.

  To tell you the truth? Her fingers tightened their grip on the wheel. I don’t know how you have the courage.

  Courage? He laughed in surprise. I don’t think it has anything to do with courage. I may be a little drunk now, from talking, but what will I have tomorrow, when I’m hungover? Tell me that.

  Call me, she said immediately. We’ll talk in the daylight too.

  Oh yeah? He shot her a playful, slanted look, almost charming for a moment. We’ll have a support group?

  No, she said. Yes, why not. Just the guys from the rosemary bush.

  Sometimes, like when we eat, he said, after a minute, I look up at her when she’s distracted and try to guess what that face looks like when she’s with him, when his look alters her. And just in general I picture how her whole appearance changes—the aging and the little wrinkles and the tiredness—how when she’s there they are smoothed over and refreshed, how she’s illuminated there. That’s the word, “illuminated.”

  And what then? she whispered.

  And then it hurts, he said, and his voice broke. Then she’s incredible.

  Tell me.

  Wait, he said, and held his hand up in front of his face. Wait. He spoke with the voice of someone excusing himself because he needs to be alone. And they had already tacitly agreed that every so often he needed to retire to another place, to take a different road, a side road, which was also—she guessed—part of the pleasure of his torment, just as she herself, it occurred to her, could retire and disappear into herself during these moments—

  She shook herself abruptly before she could get carried away, and straightened up and coughed loudly and yawned exaggeratedly, but her body sank back again and delved softly into the seat, and she knew she had been there for many long moments, stripped of any determined decision and flooded with passion and longing and love. Sometimes she would even avoid thinking of him because of a vague sense that he became more and more absent with every thought, and besides, she decided she had no right to go back there out of the exile she had imposed on herself years ago, not even as a nostalgic tourist. But now it seemed that tentacles were being sent out from there to gather her in, and she no longer had the strength to resist. She dove into a whirlwind of smells and touches and wetness and fragments of pictures, the memory of the dreams that troubled her nights, and the new islands she discovered in her body, which had remained desolate ever since that time—

  Shaul? she mumbled softly, as if asking him to come and draw her out of there. But he was gone

  And he draws back, wanting to shout, to wake them up from the hypnotic and bothersome concentration with which they dig inside him, and he feels them sucking, or consuming something from him—but what? What are they sucking out of him without his knowledge, without his volition, completely against his will? As they burrow, he wakes to feel a vague fluttering deep inside, the flicker of the thing they are searching for within him, which moves inside him and tries to evade them like a smooth purse of skin, placental, damp, and engorged with shame. Their large fingers chase it through him, and he wants to scream, to uproot them from the violent silence and from what they are doing to him, from what they are humiliating and desecrating in him, and a moment before he suffocates, he manages to take control of the wave of alarm—panic will not help them find her, and he clears his throat and says in a choked but extremely civilized voice, Good evening, my name is—

  A raucous choir of shouts of protest and barks of anger storms him, and a few men put their hands over their ears, and it occurs to him that now, at this stage of the search, he is forbidden to say his name. Apparently he must remain only “the husband.” And Elisheva? He wonders to himself and does not dare to articulate, Am I allowed to say her name here? But the look coming from their eyes slams him with the answer, and a strange weakness spreads through his legs as he looks with terror from one man to the next and his lips begin to quiver. Who are you? he asks with no voice. Why have you come?

  They do not bother to answer. Only a soft, wavy ripple flows back and forth between him and them. A few of them stand with their eyes closed, heads held back, their nostrils open at him, shamelessly inhaling him into themselves from head to toe, studying him, following him, looting. He straightens up with considerable effort and stands with his chest puffed out, although his knees threaten to fold in on themselves, and then he feels the belly of the earth growling. A very quiet, dull growl, and a humming tremble rises from the soles of his feet.

  It’s them, he thinks, horrified. It’s the men. He listens with his body and distractedly presses his feet together, but to no avail—the tremble is already inside him and seems to be massaging his nerve centers and the mortar and pestle of every joint, and he does not resist it. How could one resist it? Every moment another of them adds his voice to the choir. At first the new voice sounds clear, slightly higher than the others, then it threads in with the rest, dives into them and thickens them, and he has to actually stop himself from adding his own voice in a quiet hum, but something in him guesses that his voice would not be welcomed.

  The growl slowly dies down until finally a heavy silence descends all the way to the back rows. Then they stretch their arms up, stomp their feet a little, roll their heads around to loosen their necks. Undoubtedly, a certain stage has now concluded, and he breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe now they will begin searching in earnest.

  A hand is raised somewhere in the back rows. A faceless voice asks him to describe her, the wife.

  Where to begin? How do you describe a woman you’
ve been living with for twenty-five years? It’s a little like describing yourself, he thinks, like describing one of your internal organs, suddenly exposed. He clears his throat again and says she is fifty years old, even though she’s forty-nine—he doesn’t want to waste their time with nuances—but then he discovers that not a single sound is coming from his mouth. He has no voice.

  He is gripped by terror. He tries to say something, tries to yell, but his vocal cords are unheard, and he is struck by the thought that perhaps with that continuous growl they had not only directed their voices together but had also taken his, as one confiscates the weapons of a treacherous soldier. I can’t talk, he realizes with surrender, trying to rapidly assimilate all the novelties, to adapt himself precisely to what they need in order to find her. He is not allowed to talk and he is incapable of talking. Only thoughts are permitted here, and that’s fine. But maybe not even thoughts—maybe only these currents which surge through the blood like bolts of lightning. He looks far beyond them and feels his desire and his life force running out of him, and that’s it, he can no longer go on resisting, and with no remaining strength he finally gives himself over to the constitution that rules here, the constitution of the search, delivering himself into the hands of its emissaries, who have gathered here for the express purpose of leading him step by step and denying him any possibility of an appeal, so that he will perform, in the best possible way, the role he has always been destined for in this comedy

  Sometimes, Shaul whispers, rousing Esti from her thoughts, sometimes—listen to this—in the middle of a hug, she says to him, Let’s dance. And then he opens one eye, Paul, and laughs— Right now? But she’s already up off the bed and hurrying to the record cabinet. Naked, Shaul adds silently, and sinks into a heavy, swampy meditation, then extracts himself and continues. She bought him a new stereo system, but he won’t give up the records and phonograph he brought with him from Riga. And she likes that too, he explained, the way she likes the rotary phone he insists on keeping (“That way I can enjoy it for longer when I dial your number,” he explains), and his heavy typewriter with the ink ribbons, his old pair of moccasins, the white undershirts and white underwear, and the shaving brush that Esti already knows about, and the old plaid shirts and his funny horn-rimmed glasses and the thick wool coat and the bookshelves piled high and the piles of books from floor to ceiling, and the cheap kitchenware he stubbornly refuses to replace. Although, he notes, they do have one set of fancy dishes, painted with a fruit motif, that Elisheva bought for their festive meals—

  Shaul can see it: She leans over to browse through the albums. Paul straightens up in bed and looks at her as she bends over. She still doesn’t sense it. She will in a minute.

  He says nothing for a long time, and his eyelashes tremble with uncontrollable pain. Within the pod of pain, diving into eternity, floating alone in the empty depths, without relief—

  He almost gets out of bed and walks over to her. Shaul sees it, and his blood, like the man’s blood, screams for him to get up and go over and take hold of her from behind and grasp and spread and touch and wet and penetrate with massive force—and for one long moment he manages not to go, not to hold her—how does he manage? What incredible powers of restraint and self-control he must have. Elisheva, without looking, now feels his fervor, a huge furnace with swollen purple tendons, and Esti feels it too, even immersed in herself as she is, enraptured. It’s been years since she has allowed herself this much. She remembers how almost everything used to be a sign, a secret private sign: colorful plastic bags blowing in the wind and catching on the branches of a tree opposite her house and filling up with rain at night so they looked like large tears hanging. Or a small item on the news about a stalactite in Absalom’s Cave that had dripped into a stalagmite for thousands of years until finally they united. The world was incredibly garrulous.

  Elisheva stops looking through the records and steals a glowing sideways look at him, and her passion sparks against his—

  But no, no, she laughs, fighting him off, I wanted to dance now—

  Wait a minute, Shaul says to Esti with a choking voice, I’ll go on in a second.

  He covers himself with a thin blanket that Esti had found for him in the trunk, and turns his face to the back of the seat and closes his eyes and goes back to that place of his. She can feel his body heat rise as soon as he gets there, and she wonders what he finds there, how much further he can go, and thinks it might be better if she does not understand exactly what she is collaborating with tonight, and what Elisheva would think of her, and what she herself will think of herself in the morning. But just tonight, she begs, and knows she is prepared to keep on driving him indefinitely, soaking up the heat he projects at her like a furnace

  He tries to straighten up, but his head drops forward, and it seems he no longer has any will of his own, and this means that his volition has been taken from him along with his voice. That must be the procedure here. So everything’s all right, everything is going according to their plan, and if so, he must think of her in his heart. He just doesn’t know exactly how they want him to describe her in his thoughts, in what situation; in other words, what do they need for their search? But he soon understands exactly what they want. Their desire floods into him with a strong torrent: they want her without clothes, of course—naked, you idiot. But he refuses, and with his last remaining strength and dignity he tries to fight them, and the more he resists, the more their pressure increases, and he is surrounded by misty exhalations and hoarse sighs of anger as they sense immediately that he is trying to evade them, and he begs, Why is this necessary? Really, what does her naked body have to do with the search? It seems to him that even that thought sends a feverish chill through them, and that their eyes are now burning at him like dull embers. He quickly tries to wrap her with clothes, to hide her from them with his arms outspread, but what chance does he have opposite such an intense surge? He rocks and is shoved and tries to flee, but the waves of their desire easily subdue him, sweep him away and invade him, and his body falters on the field in front of them with none of his own desire, and he is tossed-from-side-to-side

  Backwards-forwards

  His-arms-thrown

  And-his-feet-stomping

  And-he-starts-dancing

  And-dances-for-them

  The-dance-of-the-husband

  Telling-with-his-body

  Telling-with-his-flesh

  What Elisheva looks like

  He goes Elisheva

  And comes Elisheva

  And laughs Elisheva

  And blinks Elisheva

  And dances Elisheva

  And undresses Elisheva

  And lusts for Elisheva

  And Shaul Elisheva

  From soles to head

  Rounding curving

  More beautiful

  More delicate—

  At once his arms drop to his sides and his body rocks some more, looking for the focal point of familiarity, which he has momentarily lost, and his eyes open again slowly, indulgently, with a loose straggling of the eyelashes. He believes something happened there while he was gone, but he doesn’t have the strength to remember what it was. It was as if I were running here in front of them, he thinks, confused. As if someone were doing a dance. He rubs his hands together and looks at their foreign movement, the gesture of a cunning merchant offering a prized piece of merchandise to a customer, secretive and witty, and his tongue quickly licks his dry lips, and a thin circle of stolen, ashamed sweetness stirs within him, a small precise circle like a flower bed around the roots of his soul, and in complete surrender, like a eunuch fulfilling his duty at a harem, he undresses his wife for them …

  Half an hour later, Elisheva gets out of bed again, slower and heavier, drenched with him. This time she makes sure to put something on—a T-shirt of his or a thin colorful dress that hangs in the closet—and slips her feet into his clumsy wool slippers, even though she keeps a pair of her own there, of course. Someti
mes, when she’s gone, Paul crouches next to the bed and holds one of her slippers in his hand—there is a special charm even in the way he holds her empty slipper, Shaul smiles to himself, and Esti leaves her train of thought for a moment and wonders where he is floating now—and he puts two fingers into the hollow of the slipper and twists them around to touch all its sides, then he lifts it to his face and inhales the smell of her foot, which is preserved in it, and imagines he is licking her toes and she is writhing with passion. He was the one who taught her how much pleasure is contained in one’s toes, and that there is not a single limb in our body that has no longing for pleasure. And perhaps that is the reason, Shaul suddenly thinks, that I’m incapable of sleeping with her the way I used to at the beginning. Not just because of age and habitude, but because now each cell in her body is taut with the pleasure sensors he has revealed to her, and as soon as I touch her, they wake up and start looking for him. I feel them searching, he thought. That must also be why our sex has become rarer, and shorter. I don’t make love to her anymore. You can’t call it making love, certainly not like once. We had it so good once, before all this started. Over the last few years a silent arrangement has emerged between him and Elisheva. Shaul can’t even remember when it began or how it became habit: they go to sleep as usual, with soft and concerned affection, read a little, say good night, and fall asleep. And in the middle of the night, at three or four, almost completely asleep, they press against each other with eyes shut, desperately twisting around each other, violently even, like two strangers meeting in a dream, plundering and being plundered in the dark. Hard and full of sharp passion, they moan and scratch and glisten with fresh sweat, and prey upon each other because of the foreignness, then disengage and fall into a heavy slumber. In the morning they do not say a word about it, perhaps only the flicker of a look of shame, as if they both see themselves there, two wolves fighting as they grunt and whine over which of them will grab the larger piece of pleasure, and there is always a little guilt at the corners of their eyes, as if it were not with each other that they had slept. Then come many more nights of nothing, and suddenly they are thrown against each other again in their sleep.