Waking Lions

by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

  So she closed her eyes, even though she knew she wouldn’t sleep, and when he finally lifted the blanket and lay down beside her in the long chaos of the night, there was no desert, and it was because he didn’t come to lie beside her that they were finally able to evade the desert, and she finally found sweet water in it.

  10

  IT WAS SLIGHTLY AFTER SUNRISE when Semar began to scream, and for the first moment Eitan was sure the screams were coming from his commander in the army, about whom he was dreaming. A moment later he was awake, and two moments later he was standing over the baby and knew they were in trouble.

  The baby’s skin had a repulsive blue tinge. The color itself wasn’t repulsive. People buy sheets that color. And bedspreads. And dishes. People buy very expensive tickets in order to travel to countries that have beaches or lakes exactly that color. But they don’t want to see babies that color. Babies are supposed to be pink. Pink is healthy. Pink means a proper pulse and good blood circulation and oxygen sailing on the blood like tourists on a cruise ship.

  Blue is the opposite. Even if people don’t know why, even if they have no idea what hemoglobin actually is, they still know that blue is the opposite. Semar, for example, knew that something was wrong with her baby the moment she opened her eyes and saw he was blue. That’s when she began to scream. Simply because that was the only thing she could do. When the baby’s father had sent her to straighten the storeroom and then came and grabbed her from behind, she could also have screamed. But she hadn’t. She knew screaming would have consequences. She knew that the consequences would take a great deal of time and that what the baby’s father wanted to do would take only a few minutes. She hadn’t thought of him as the baby’s father then. There hadn’t yet been a baby that would make him a father. When his semen dribbled onto her thigh a few minutes later, she had hoped that would be the end of it. But that man’s semen was exactly like the man himself – it grabbed her by force and didn’t let go. At first, it angered her. It angered her even more than what that man had done to her. She thought about a baby with that man’s face sitting in her belly and gorging itself all day, gorging on her. A baby with that man’s face deciding when she’d go to the bathroom, when she’d eat, when she’d vomit. It angered her so much that she punched herself hard in the stomach, aiming directly at the face of that man who was growing inside her. But no matter how much she punched it, the baby simply grew and grew, and the more it grew, the more she hated it. Like that man’s prick, which hadn’t even been hard when he first grabbed her, but when he felt her recoiling, swelled suddenly – the baby grew on her hatred the same way.

  So one day she took a long iron pipe from the storeroom and cleaned it well. Then she lay down on her back, legs spread, and told herself to be calm, it wouldn’t take very long. She had already pushed the pipe inside her when Sirkit opened the storeroom door and saw her. Idiot, she had cried, stupid little cow. Don’t you understand that you have money between your legs. Sirkit told her that when the baby came, everyone would know that the father had fucked her in the storeroom, and he would have to give her money. A lot of money, Sirkit said. She helped her remove the iron pipe and smiled when she saw that there wasn’t much blood on it. She told her that no one must know about the baby, especially the father. Sirkit told her she had to take very good care of it and feed it, the way people took care of their pigs in the village. They fed them and took care of them even though they were ugly and smelly, because they knew that in the end, they would make money from them. Semar kept the secret of the baby in her belly and took good care of it, thinking all the time about the pig growing in her womb, smooth and pink. When it began to move inside her, she thought about the piglets in the village and how they used to run away from the children when they chased them, trying to scare them, and that made her laugh. She no longer thought about a large, hairy pig. She thought about a cute little piglet and was ashamed when she remembered how she had almost skewered it with that iron pipe.

  On the night her water burst, she was suddenly frightened. That cute little piglet and the baby’s father became confused in her mind and she didn’t know which of them was going to come out of her. Then the pains were so strong that she was convinced it would be the father. The piglet would never hurt her so much. The baby’s father would hurt her coming out as much as he had hurt when entering her. In a moment she would see his disgusting face and no one would stop her from shutting his mouth the way he had shut hers in the storeroom, although it hadn’t been necessary because she wouldn’t have screamed.

  But when the baby finally emerged, he didn’t look like his father at all. Or like the piglets in the village either. If anything, he looked like a dolphin. She’d seen a dolphin only once, but she remembered it the way a person remembers the one time when things were really okay. Her father had rowed the boat into the sea and she sat with him, mending the holes in the net. The sun had just risen, but it was as hot as it was at noon, and the silence was broken only by the sounds of the oar in the water. Her mind was focused on the net, on the small repairs that wouldn’t hold for very long, but would do for now, and then she heard the silence. That is, she heard that the oar was no longer hitting the water, and since her father never stopped rowing so close to the shore, she raised her head. The dolphin was right beside the boat. It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, and even though she was only six, she knew it was the most beautiful thing she would ever see in her life. It swam alongside the boat, and her father gestured for her to put down the net and come to him. Then he did something that made her forget the dolphin. Something truly wonderful. He picked her up in his arms and held her in the air above the water. He did it so she could see the dolphin. So that the dolphin could see her. Her father knew that dolphins and little girls didn’t encounter each other very often. But she didn’t look at the dolphin at all. She looked at her father as he held her above the water. It didn’t last very long and it never happened again. He put her down. She continued mending the net, he continued rowing, and the dolphin continued on its way.

  When Sirkit and her doctor brought her the baby, she saw immediately that it looked like the dolphin. That made her happy. That made the pain between her legs less painful. She counted his fingers, thinking how small they were, and then remembered his father’s fingers, how he had forced them inside her, and thought they had once been that small too. Sirkit took the baby and told her she needed to rest. She didn’t argue. It seemed like a good idea, to rest. When the baby opened its eyes for a moment, they didn’t look like his father’s eyes at all, and that calmed her down. But then she thought about all the other parts of his body, how you couldn’t know now what they would look like later. His nose, let’s say. Or his ears. Not to mention his voice. She didn’t know what she would do if he had the same voice. But he wouldn’t have the same voice, she reassured herself. He wouldn’t. Because your voice comes out of your mouth, and her milk would flow into his mouth.

  She fell asleep with that thought, and when she woke up, she saw that the baby’s skin had a blue tinge. That’s when she began to scream.

  The baby wasn’t dead, but it didn’t look good. The garage wasn’t equipped to treat respiratory distress. Nor was it equipped to treat Semar’s screams. At Soroka, the nurses kept the family away when complications developed. They called security. That might seem harsh, or heartless, but hospitals cannot work with all that screaming. It frightens the other patients. It distracts the doctors. It lowers the morale in the battle against death. Semar screamed and screamed, and Eitan was about to tell Sirkit to take her out when he realized that he himself was the one who had to leave.

  He picked up the baby, surprised by the incredible lightness of the small body. Three steps and he was at the door, calculating the quickest way to the hospital –

  Stop.

  She stood before him barefoot, her hair in tangles. Some part of his mind registered the outline of her nipples under her shirt. The softness that her
body projected, the scent of sleep that rose from her – they stood in direct opposition to her cold, metallic voice as she told him he would stay here.

  They will want to know where you brought it from. They will come here.

  “Then I’ll make up something,” he roared at her, holding the baby in one hand, searching for the keys to the SUV with the other. “I won’t let it die here.”

  I will not let one baby bring down a whole hospital.

  He finally found the right keys. The SUV gave a cheerful chirp when he pressed the remote to unlock it. He raced toward it, Sirkit in pursuit. For the first time since he had met her, he saw her upset. Not because of the baby with the blue skin, but because she realized that he had decided to disobey her. I will go to the police. If you go to the hospital, I will go to the police.

  He looked at her for a moment. Enough to know that she was serious. He closed the door and drove off.

  *

  The road to Beersheba was completely empty at that hour. He drove as fast as he could. He talked to the baby. He told him to hold on. He promised him that everything would be fine. He updated him on the number of kilometers they still had to drive. He assured him it was really close. “Another little bit,” he said, “just another little bit.”

  The baby was in the back, in the car seat Eitan had bought and installed for Yaheli, which was, of course, too big for him. There was no real reason to put him there. He could just as easily have put him on his lap. That might even have been more logical, because he could have seen what was happening with him. But his father reflex went into action – babies are put in the back, buckled in. Anything else was irresponsible. And there he was now, a forty-one-year-old man, speaking to a baby in the back seat. And the baby wasn’t answering. It was a baby, after all. A blue baby.

  Seven kilometers to the city of Beersheba, and Eitan’s voice rose to a shout. It’ll be fine, he screamed to the back seat, it’ll be really fine. We’re almost there. And then he realized that he’d been avoiding looking at the baby. He had spoken to him, promised him, sometimes pleaded with him, but he hadn’t looked at him. He straightened the rearview mirror and peered at the back seat.

  Five kilometers from the city of Beersheba, he stopped the car. He couldn’t tell how many minutes he’d been racing like that to no avail, making promises to a dead baby.

  *

  It was 7:30 in the morning and Eitan still hadn’t come home from the hospital. Liat walked around the living room, wiping invisible dust from pillows and sofas, straightening up what was clearly straightened. Her grandmother would have known what to do. Her grandmother would have looked him right in the eye for ten seconds and known. But her grandmother had been gone for three years now. Four, if you count the year after her stroke, before she died. She’d had it right after the operation, and had never opened her eyes again. She simply lay in her bed in the hospital with her eyes closed. Who knows whether she was there at all. So what if she breathed? Her grandmother was the world champion of pretending she was home when she actually wasn’t. Because of the thieves, she’d told Liat, so they won’t think no one’s home and go inside. She left the lights on and the radio playing loudly – and went out. Maybe it was like that during that year in the hospital. All the doctors and nurses checked the signs of life like thieves listening at the door, but she’d left a long time ago.

  It was just like her grandmother to trick them like that. After all, for years she’d been hiding the fact that she had a problem. Didn’t tell anyone she was sick. Hid it so well. Hid it even from death. It forgot her. Like a cleaning woman who promised to come on Sunday but forgot, and the house was a mess all week. Death, like someone with Alzheimer’s, knew it was supposed to meet a woman, but couldn’t remember which one, couldn’t remember where, roamed the street in confusion. On the way it met other grandmothers, but not hers.

  In the end, they met. Almost by accident. The pneumonia she caught lying there in the department with her eyes closed finished her off in less than a week. Liat was left to look at coffee grounds alone, and saw nothing in them. Now she tried again: she made coffee and examined the grounds carefully. Perhaps they’d tell her where the hell her man was. She could call the department. Ask if he was there. Try to spot, through the receiver, the subtle tones of a lie. The giggle of a reception clerk. Or the opposite – a surprised, awkward silence. Or the high-pitched, false voice of a nurse. They knew where he was and wouldn’t tell her. The doctors, the interns, the entire hospital was probably laughing at her behind her back.

  She put the coffee cup in the sink and called the children. They came immediately, all ready. Itamar had dressed Yaheli and both now stood in front of her, ready to move. She felt awful seeing them dressed like that. She looked at the shoes and knew: they understood that something was wrong. Itamar had tied Yaheli’s shoelaces, and Yaheli had let him without crying or carrying on. But children were supposed to cry and carry on and not see anything but themselves. If they came the minute you called them, dressed like photos in a magazine, then the situation had to be really grim.

  He looked at them as they left the house. Yaheli with his dog hat. Itamar with his football-shaped backpack, even though he didn’t like football at all and the other kids never let him play. Liat, her hair in a ponytail, and around her neck the necklace she hadn’t taken off since her grandmother had given it to her as a wedding present. His family left the house and he watched them as they walked down the driveway. Unknowingly regal. Unaware of their true worth. Perfect in their ignorance.

  Itamar saw him first and waved. Yaheli, who, as always, watched every movement his brother made, saw him next. He dropped Liat’s hand and ran to him.

  “Daddy!”

  Eitan picked him up in his arms, momentarily surprised at his weight. The kid has gotten heavy, or else I’ve gotten weak. When he put Yaheli down, Liat was already standing beside her car.

  “Ya’allah, sweeties, we have to get going.”

  Her voice was light and playful. A light and playful iceberg. Eitan wondered if the kids noticed it or only he did.

  “I want Daddy to take me,” Yaheli said, “I want to go in the SUV!”

  “Daddy’s tired,” she said, “he didn’t sleep all night.” Don’t put your money on Oedipus, she thought. This little kid had already forgotten who had bathed and diapered and nursed him, and he ran toward his father’s SUV, straight into the arms of the enemy. Eitan was probably thrilled. Another point for him in the unspoken, silent but bloody battle – who did they love more?

  But to her surprise, he rejected the tribute. “Not today, Yaheli, go with Mommy.” Maybe he really was tired. Or wanted to send her a gesture of conciliation. In any event, it would take much more than that to persuade Yaheli. He ran to the SUV and climbed inside through the open door of the driver’s seat, crawled over the gear box and landed in his car seat. Liat smiled despite herself. He was such a determined little monkey. But Eitan didn’t smile. When Yaheli’s body touched the seat, he suddenly paled. His lips trembled.

  “Yaheli, get out of there.”

  She had heard him speak in that voice only once. Years ago, in the Judean Desert, on one of their first hikes together. It was in the middle of the week, and there was no other living creature at Nahal Mishmar, so they allowed themselves to fuck in the dry stream bed near the cistern. A long, slow fuck, not only because they’d met only recently and were very attracted to each other, but also because they wanted to impress each other. She was on top when she felt his entire body tense, and thought he had come. “Don’t move,” he said. His voice was strange, icy. She didn’t move. She was sure that it had something to do with some orgasmic spot in the masculine anatomy. A moment later she saw the snake. It was small and black and very close. Time passed, ten seconds, a minute, five. They didn’t move. The snake’s tongue moved in and out, in and out, almost as if it were saying, “I saw your in-and-out, now you look at mine.” At some point, it stopped. Slithered away. They watched it, naked and ten
sed. After that, fucking was impossible, and being naked in the middle of the dry stream bed seemed weird. They dressed and continued their trek, trying to laugh about it, but back home they never mentioned that snake again.

  When Eitan ordered Yaheli to get out, something inside her recognized that voice. There was something in the SUV. A snake, or a scorpion. Something bad. She hurried over to look inside and saw nothing. The car seats. A few toys. Empty pizza boxes. It couldn’t be that Eitan was so stressed because of pizza boxes.

  “Yaheli, I told you not to sit there. Out!”

  Eitan’s voice rose to a shout. She’d already heard him shout, but never like this. His shouts were always brief, decisive. When Itamar ran into the road in front of their apartment in Givatayim. When the nurses in Tel Hashomer Hospital put her grandmother in a bed in the corridor. As if he had first checked all the possibilities carefully, and when he saw that there really was no other choice, he shouted. But this shout was different. Yaheli began to cry. Itamar also had tears in his eyes. A moment later, Eitan kneeled down in front of the sobbing child. “I’m sorry. Daddy’s sorry.” But Yaheli didn’t calm down. Just the opposite. The thought that his father could shout at him that way for no good reason was more frightening than the idea that he’d done something to provoke it.

  Liat looked at her watch. She’d be late getting to pre-school, a crying child in tow. The other mothers would ask, “Tough morning?” their sympathetic tone barely covering the gloating, the way the tight swimsuits they wore at the country club couldn’t hide their cellulite. She’d smile and say, “It happens,” and wouldn’t say a word that might give away the fact that for more than a month, her man had been disappearing at night and she didn’t know where. Thinking about it upset her so much that she bent down and picked up Yaheli.