Pain

by Zeruya Shalev

  “I have to get going,” she says to her friend, whose jaw drops in puzzlement.

  “I don’t believe it,” Dafna says. “What’s going on with you? You got me out of my office and now you have to go?”

  “I’m sorry, Dafi, I forgot that I have a really important meeting. I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”

  Dafna looks hopelessly at the huge plate of salad that has just arrived and says, “Okay, I’ll ask them to bag it for me,” then adds reproachfully, “I really don’t understand you. You tell me that Mickey is cheating on you but you haven’t looked this good in years. Maybe you’re the one having an affair? Who is this important meeting with?”

  Iris bends down, kisses her cheek, and whispers in her ear, “With the past. I have a rendezvous with the past.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dafna tries to hold her by the arm.

  “I’ll tell you later. I have to go before I lose my nerve.”

  But she’s feeling braver, as if she had been put under a spell at night as she slept alone in the double bed, with Mickey on the other side of the wall, in Alma’s bed. For the first time in a long while, they switched beds, for the first time in a long while she focused her mind entirely on him, the way she sometimes focused on her pupils, the difficult, baffling ones. She would focus on a particular one and try to understand what made him tick, how she could reach him. That was how she concentrated on Mickey for that entire, long night until the picture became perfectly clear. But the moment it did, it became just another fact in the world, not even one that concerned her in particular or one she had to do or feel something about.

  No, she feels nothing but the urgent need to return to the place where she saw Eitan, an urgent need she remembers so well from her youth. That made it seem as if she hasn’t actually met Mickey yet, as if the day Eitan suddenly reappeared in her life belongs to an earlier time, before she met him, and so his life doesn’t touch her at all.

  But what does touch her? The sounds spilling out of the loudspeakers spin around her like spools of spine-tingling electricity, cello and piano accompanying each other, echoing, beckoning. As she drives down the hill, she sees in her mind’s eye a winged young boy and girl ascending and descending on a ladder that reaches to the sky, meeting for a brief moment and separating again, forced to move in opposite directions, he is life and she is death, he is death and she is life. Who doomed them to eternal separation? Life and death are, after all, intertwined, she recalls, thinking about the weeks she lay in her bed, dry-eyed, neither hungry nor thirsty, unmoving in her small, dark room as the angles and intensity of light shifted along the floor tiles. But that meant nothing to her because if she never saw Eitan again, she didn’t want to see anything, if she couldn’t speak with Eitan again, she didn’t want to say anything, if she never heard his voice again, she didn’t want to hear anything. Sometimes, it seemed to her that he was calling her name, that he had come back to her, but that was no longer him because the Eitan who was capable of leaving her that way was no longer the same person, he was lost forever. So she lay on her back, diminishing, absorbed into the mattress that was absorbed into the bed that was absorbed into the floor that was absorbed into the ground. She didn’t have to do anything, for she would get there sooner or later, all she needed was patience and she would disappear forever.

  Occasionally, strange bodies would enter her room and try to disturb her, disrupt her plan: the family doctor, the school guidance counselor, her homeroom teacher. They would sit at her bedside and plead with her, but she didn’t hear a thing because it wasn’t Eitan’s voice, and later, there was whispering in the next room, talk about hospitalizing her, but her mother objected strenuously. She vaguely remembers how frightened her twin brothers were, and Yoav, the more sensitive one, would sometimes crawl over to her bed and beg her to get better, but she didn’t care about his pleas, didn’t care about getting better.

  Give up on me, she wanted to tell them, give up on me the way I gave up on you, it might seem difficult, but it’s so easy. That is the great deception that allows humanity to exist, the deception that is meant to hide the fact that giving up is actually easier than persisting. But the moment we understand it, like a stolen bite of the fruit of knowledge, we discover the terrible taste of pointlessness and then there’s no going back, because there is no point in eating and drinking, no point in washing and dressing, no point in going out and coming back, no point in working and studying, no point in marrying and giving birth.

  In fact, to this very day, she doesn’t know how she got well. Probably the IV the family doctor inserted into her veins when she was too weak to object also released drops of the spice of life into her bloodstream, for they finally managed to pull her up from the depths of her misery and give her, even if only artificially, the minimum necessary to recover. As a baby learns to walk, she relearned the necessary life skills that had been almost completely lost to her, and she slowly and carefully returned to the world. But Eitan Rosenfeld was no longer in that world, so she did not experience it as a return but rather as a first encounter with a new world, one that was quite bland and left her almost indifferent. It was only a basic impulse to do what she had to do that allowed her to move from one day to the next, and later, to do it well, until finally, the impulse expanded and the new world grew fuller. But now that she is once again squeezing into that small parking space, which has apparently been waiting for her since the last time, she thinks that it was nothing but an illusion.

  And so she crosses the corridors now with her jaw clenched as if they were raging rivers. Heart pounding, she climbs the hilly steps quickly despite the pain, which wastes no time in coming. She glances at her watch every now and then, as if she has an appointment, it is almost noon. Is he also glancing at his watch now, wondering when she will arrive? How has she gotten stuck in this strange, overheated corridor facing the wooded hills, a corridor that leads nowhere just when she is in such a hurry, and, perspiring, she has to backtrack and ask the passersby. Last time, with Mickey leading her, the walk was much shorter, and naively, she didn’t wonder why he knew his way around so well. Now the arrow points straight ahead, so she goes straight ahead, then it says to turn, so she turns, and there it is, she has reached him. Agitated, sweaty, panting—that is apparently how you arrive at a rendezvous with the past.

  But his door is closed and a long line of people is standing beside it, all of them waiting for him to help them. How will she break through the blockade of pain, how will she get inside? None of them will give up their eagerly awaited visit with the doctor for her sake, and her own appointment is a long way off, almost two weeks away. Under the watchful eye of a stern-looking receptionist, she hesitates at the closed door, the situation is more complicated than she expected. Maybe she’ll push inside when the door opens just to tell him she’s there, that it’s her, but they will all attack her immediately, people in pain are not particularly patient. Tensely, she looks at the first people in line. The one closest to the door is a pretty, plump girl with flowing brown curls, her eyes glued to a small tablet as her fingers fly across it. Iris speaks to her in a whisper, as if they are conspiring against the other people in the line, “Are you next? Could you let me go in with you for just a minute? I just need a quick word with him and then I’ll leave. It’s really urgent, okay?”

  The girl frowns at her, surprised at her chutzpah, but gives her a quick, angry nod as if she is annoyed at herself for being unable to refuse and at her for knowing how to exploit that. “Okay, if it’s only for a minute,” she says, quickly returning her gaze to the tablet, and Iris thanks her warmly, leans against the wall, and looks at the door and the name written on the wall beside it. What an amazing coincidence, who would have thought it possible that she would one day find herself standing in front of a door that has Eitan’s name hanging on the wall beside it.

  Suddenly, her certainty is shaken, sometimes doctors switch shifts and
don’t take the trouble to inform the people waiting in the corridor, that has happened to her more than once, so she asks the girl, “It’s Dr. Rosen in there, isn’t it?” The girl, torn away from what she’s doing, looks at the sign on the wall, and then focuses on her tablet again as if that is where the answer can be found.

  “I think so,” she replies coolly. She doesn’t appear to care one way or the other, and as Iris thanks her again, she glances at the screen, freezing in shock as she recognizes the familiar, old-looking chessboard in a creamy brown color reminiscent of the one her father played on. Why didn’t she think of it sooner! This is probably the girl Mickey told her about the day before, the girl from his office, perhaps his lover, even though, looking at her, it seems unlikely, she’s too young and good-looking in her short striped dress, why would she want Mickey? Nonetheless, not many women play speed chess while waiting to see a doctor, and it isn’t unreasonable to assume that Mickey infected her with his rare hobby. Perhaps that’s why she agreed to Iris’s request, apparently her reward for lending her husband to this girl, and she asks chattily, “You’re playing speed chess? My husband is addicted to it!”

  The girl gives her a blank look similar to the look Mickey gives her when she interrupts him in the middle of a game. “Not now,” she mutters, and goes straight back to moving the pieces with her fingers, her curls covering the screen. Iris looks at her uneasily, is this Mickey’s taste? Actually, she doesn’t know much about his taste in women. Is he attracted to women who are thin or plump, short or tall, fair or dark? When they met, she was thin and long-haired, and a few years later, when her appearance changed, he didn’t seem less attracted to her. The girlfriend he had before her was totally different, red-headed, lively, curvaceous. Appearance, it seems, doesn’t really matter, and why shouldn’t he be attracted to this girl, who has eyes as brown as her hair, smooth skin, feet encased in gold sandals, nails covered in glittery red polish.

  But a moment later, all of that is forgotten. The door opens and a short, white-haired old lady comes out carrying a pile of forms, one of them falls onto the threshold. Iris bends down to retrieve it for her and when she straightens up, she sees him standing in front of her, his eyes fixed inquisitively on her, the wrinkle between them deepening.

  She walks toward him slowly, a step, perhaps two, longer than infinity, because she doesn’t know how to walk. She left her bed for the first time only today so she has to learn everything all over again. She reaches out and puts her arms around his neck in a trembling embrace, even though the door is open, even though the girl is standing in the doorway to his office making sure she doesn’t lose her turn. To her surprise, he responds immediately, his arms encircle her back, and since she can’t see his face, she says, “It is you, isn’t it?” But he neither confirms nor denies, only whispers, “Wait for me,” and walks her to the door. As if in a dream, she sits down on the chair the girl has vacated, her body is still trembling, she feels the touch of his cold fingers on her arms, crosses them and covers his touch.

  In the hours that follow, it happens again and again. She once again walks slowly toward him, arms extended, once again places them on the back of his neck, once again asks him, “It’s you, isn’t it?” Only the end changes occasionally: did he say, “Wait for me,” or did he say, “Don’t wait for me”? Did he walk her out or send her away, as he had then, saying, “I’m tired of this burden, I want to live.” She sits unmoving, the girl who went inside with her has already come out, stealing a curious glance at her. A frighteningly gaunt man enters after her wearing phosphorescent running shoes, even though he can barely walk, much less run. Now he too comes out holding forms, and a woman about her age hurries inside, her hairless skull exposed, she will definitely remind him of his mother, will he throw her out of his office, will he tell her that he wants to live?

  She is surprised when that patient remains inside longer than the previous ones, and when she does leave, there is a paleness still hanging on her face. Then an old man is led into the office by his impatient son, and she doesn’t move the entire time, doesn’t open her handbag even though her cell phone occasionally rings. She is waiting for him, as he asked, and even if he didn’t ask, she is waiting for him. Or perhaps it isn’t him she is waiting for, but rather for the past, which partly belongs to him, because it seems to her now that nothing she has done since then, no experience she has had since then, no feeling she has felt since then can rise above that past.

  There is life, it appears, that progresses step by step, brick by brick, reaches its peak and stabilizes there, and when decline begins, it is expected and natural. But there is life that declines almost from its beginning because its peak comes early, as it did with hers, that is clear to her now and she did in fact know it even then. It seems to her that there is only a loose connection between the girl she was and the woman she is now, a loose connection that does not allow for a full life because the main link is missing. How was she naive enough to believe that she could construct the framework of a life without it, without the main link that is sitting behind that closed door now. She fixes her eyes on that door, not daring to look away, afraid she will miss an opportunity to see him, if only for an instant, to hear his voice.

  How strange it is that he doesn’t come out. Is he afraid of her? She hopes to catch an occasional glimpse of him, to glance surreptitiously at him as he walks through the corridor, called out for urgent consultation as he was with her. When she lay there totally exposed to him, did he rush out because he recognized her? Did he return home that night and tell his wife that he saw his first love? You won’t believe who I saw in the clinic today, my first girlfriend, the one I left, I hardly recognized her, she’s changed so much.

  But the thought of his wife disturbs her, and she stares impatiently at the line of people, which isn’t getting shorter because new patients are replacing those who leave. The world is full of pain and it all flows here. This must be what the cycle of life looks like to God on high, people leave and new ones come, and it’s difficult to tell them apart. They all look alike because they are in pain, and it is he of all people who presumes to ease pain, the man who hurt her so much at the beginning of her life. What a paradox! Is this how he atones for his sin? You’re missing the point, she will tell him, you can only make amends to the ones you have injured, there are no substitutes, there is no way around it, not even God can grant atonement for such sins, let alone mere mortals.

  On the other hand, how can she blame him or expect him to atone? He was a child, only slightly older than her Omer, a neglected child, lost, frightened. It wasn’t his fault that she reacted so badly, nor was he to blame for running from her as if she were the angel of death. That was his way of coping with the death of his mother when he was mad with sorrow, fleeing from the grief and leaving it behind with her, otherwise he would not have disappeared so cruelly, for such a long time. Did he really look for her?

  A woman sits down beside her with a sigh, her face yellow from her illness, her head wrapped in a kerchief. But printed on her blouse are smiling hearts—how striking is the gap between the people here and the clothes they wear. Like them, on the morning of the attack, she wore a light striped shirt as if she were going out to jog. Indeed, she flew through the air as if she were weightless, but when she landed among the burning bodies, broken glass, shrapnel, the objects that flew out of people’s bags, her cheerful shirt became covered with blood and her mother threw it out even though she explicitly asked her to wash and keep it. She always had reservations about her daughter’s striped shirts, which she thought were too young-looking, and she took advantage of the opportunity to get rid of at least one of them. Even she herself liked those shirts less after her injury and finally gave them, along with most of the clothes that didn’t fit her anymore, to a shelter for battered women. Now she recalls the striped dress that the girl who played chess was wearing, and once again the seemingly random facts join together in a taunting,
ominous image of parallel lives suddenly clashing though they were never supposed to meet at all. Only now that image threatens her less because the meeting she awaits so eagerly was not supposed to take place either, or was it the parting that never should have taken place.

  How long will she wait? It seems to her that at least ten people have come out of his office since she arrived, and she can already see the cycle. Each one remains inside for about fifteen minutes, sometimes longer, so on a full day, he sees dozens of patients. How many does he succeed in helping? And for how long? She sees that no one leaves his office empty-handed, they all carry white forms and they all look slightly more relaxed, apparently smiling their thank-yous as they leave, because there is the tail end of a smile on their faces when they come back into the corridor, back to their lives. Will she also come out of there smiling? Will he give her white papers too?

  She smiles as she recalls how they used to sit on his bed, surrounded by papers, when she tutored him for his exams. Even though she was a year younger and a grade below him, she was able to teach him material she hadn’t learned yet, with patience she didn’t know she had, that’s how much she loved him. He found it difficult to listen, he was distracted, who knows how he managed to study medicine, because without her, he wouldn’t even have passed his matriculation exams. She always breezed through school, while he found it difficult to concentrate, he never had enough time in exams, and the system was far less forgiving than it is today. A boy taking care of his sick mother alone was given no special consideration, nor did he give himself any. How frustrated he was when again and again, he couldn’t finish exams in the allotted time, or forgot to answer certain questions and lost points out of carelessness, and even worse, forgot the answers she had taught him the night before. She would sit beside him on the bed covered with papers and try to console him—don’t blame yourself, Tani, your head is somewhere else, of course it’s hard for you to remember, there are extenuating circumstances.