Pain

by Zeruya Shalev

  “Set the table in the garden.”

  She walks down the rickety steps. A round, unsteady wooden table stands there, covered with dry leaves, which she sweeps away with her hand. Then she goes back to the kitchen and easily finds a rag, a tablecloth, plates, and silverware. After all, she knows this house as well as she knows her own, she even recognizes some of the items.

  “Since when have you actually been living here?” she asks. “Did you live here with your wives?” Despite her curiosity, she still hasn’t dared to question him about his adult life. Focusing on their past, she was afraid to ask about the course his life took after they went their separate ways, in case the thirty years they had lived apart had triumphed over their year together.

  “You’re my wife,” he replies immediately, “there were no other wives.”

  “Right,” she chuckles. “All you did was marry twice and make two children.”

  He sautées the garlic and tomatoes, drains the spaghetti, and adds it to the frying pan. “The fact is that I didn’t stay with either one of them.”

  “That fact is open to many interpretations, some harsher than others.”

  “Women always interpret more harshly,” he smiles. He hands her the bowl of spaghetti with sauce, then puts the bottle of wine, a plate of black olives, and a bowl of yogurt on a tray. When they finally sit down, they hear the sound of movement approaching and she is momentarily shaken. Maybe it’s Mickey, maybe he followed her here and has been hiding in the hedge, but it’s only a scrawny cat, the worried expression on its face almost funny.

  “Come on, Gulliver, the coast is clear,” Eitan tells it. “Itamar’s not here, you can relax.” He stands up and pours some cat food nuggets into a bowl under the steps. “Itamar tortures him a little. When he stays over here, the cat is always shaken up.”

  “So who’s Itamar’s mother?” she asks hesitantly.

  “Not you, I’m sorry to say. Do you remember how sure we were that you were pregnant after we took a bath together in your house?”

  “Of course. It was so scary, I started taking pills right after that.”

  “We could have had a twenty-seven-year-old son.”

  “Daughter, not son,” she corrects him.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because it had to be a daughter, and we would have named her Miriam.”

  “So I’ve already done that,” he says wryly, wiping his mouth with a napkin. The absence of his beard now completely exposes lips red from the sauce, his white face appearing to be made up.

  “But not with me,” she says, suddenly tormented by her guilt at betraying her daughter, a betrayal no less cruel than his betrayal of her. “So who is Miriam’s mother?” she asks.

  To her surprise, he isn’t evasive this time. “Her name’s Susan. She’s a gynecologist.” She trembles for a moment at his words. So he did marry a doctor, and he did look for her. Bits of correct information blend with lies—this is what her mother told her, married to a doctor and the father of three bright children.

  “You went to medical school together?” she asks. “She tutored you for your exams?”

  “Of course,” he laughs. “Without her I would have failed.”

  He seems to be weary of the subject, but she doesn’t let up, she wants to know everything, despite her fears. Where they married, where they lived, what they talked about, how they made love, what sort of husband he was, what sort of father. And she wants to see pictures, all the pictures he has. Maybe she’s making the same mistake now that she made then, not separating herself from him, because she wants to be under the wedding canopy with him and in bed with him, she wants to see his daughter emerge from another woman’s womb. If that’s how it was meant to be, at least she would be there, beside him. But on the other hand, she doesn’t want to tell him anything about her own marriage and children, particularly not about her Alma, who was born very small and remarkably beautiful. But Iris looked at her with disappointment because she wasn’t the daughter she saw in her mind’s eye, long-limbed, blue-eyed, and black-haired, because she wasn’t their Miriam.

  “What do you want to know?” he asks. “I told you, didn’t I?”

  She glances at her watch. That baby is apparently in trouble and she has to rescue her, atone for that first look of disappointment she gave her. But how will she tell him that she has to go? How will she walk out of here when it is so pleasant sitting across from him in the neglected garden, which belongs to her no less than her own home, because in this garden, redolent of tree resin, a perfect fossil of the young girl she was has been preserved.

  He fills her plate and her glass over and over again, how will she even be able to drive? The paling, shrinking moon hangs like a yellow plum above the tree, the world is filled with miracles and disasters, and now she’s on the miracle side of it, no wonder she can’t get up and move from here to the disaster side. But she has no choice. She stands up and, weaving slightly, goes over to him, holding on to the rickety table.

  “Where are you going?” he asks, and sits her down on his lap. “It’s incredible how much you look like my mother now.”

  “It’s only my hair that reminds you of her wig.”

  But he shakes his head. “It’s also the eyes and something in the way you walk, it’s amazing, I don’t understand what’s happening to me, what time I’m living in.” He grasps her hair tightly as if trying to pull off the wig, crushes her lips with his until she can’t breathe, unbuttons her shirt and buries his head between her breasts.

  “My love,” she mumbles, “I have to go.”

  And he whispers, “Don’t go, stay with me.”

  When she looks at her watch again, it’s past midnight and her body is filled with his love, with the resin of their youth, with crumbling dry leaves, with promises and vows and with longing as old as their unborn children. When she breaks away from him, her heart pounding, she too no longer remembers who she is and what time she is living in, where she came from and where she is going. Will she have to answer for her actions, and to whom?

  As her car ascends the hill, worry attacks her like a highway robber of old, and she tries to calm down. She’ll go to see Alma tomorrow, another day won’t matter, and at home, Mickey is probably asleep, convinced she drove to Tel Aviv. It isn’t likely that he’s waiting up for her after he refused to go with her, and Omer said he would sleep at Yotam’s house. No one will see her when she arrives, her kissed lips and love-sated body redolent of intimacy. She tiptoes inside, she’ll shower in the morning, better not to make unnecessary noise. She brushes her teeth quickly at the kitchen sink, then goes into Alma’s dark room and closes the door. But when she undresses silently and climbs into bed, she is horrified to feel another body under the blanket and cries out in fright. Is Mickey lying in wait for her there, shrunken with jealousy? But it isn’t his large body. She leaps out of bed, gasping, and opens the shutters. In the light of the full moon that followed her here, she recognizes Alma, whose mouth is slightly open in surprise and disgust, as if she has just seen an especially disturbing sight.

  Unnerved, Iris stares at her alibi fading before her eyes, a skinny, mysterious, fragile alibi. What will she say to Mickey? Why didn’t he tell her that Alma is home and there’s no point in driving to see her? He must have deliberately laid a trap for her and now she has to deceive him in return, even though she doesn’t have enough information. When did Alma arrive? What time did she leave work? She may be able to say that she went to the bar and Alma wasn’t there, but she has to wake her if she doesn’t want to be caught in a lie.

  “Alma?” she whispers. “I’m so glad you’re here! When did you come?” as if she hasn’t noticed that her daughter is sleeping.

  To her surprise, Alma responds to her forced cheerfulness, mumbling in her sleep, “Mom! I waited for you, where were you?”

  “At work. When did you come? Why
didn’t you let me know you were home?”

  But Alma has already turned onto her side, showing her narrow back clad in one of Mickey’s huge T-shirts. Iris closes the shutters quietly and tiptoes to Omer’s room so she can sleep in his bed, anything to keep Mickey from waking up. She can’t face him like this, with her skin coated in a layer of love and her brain empty of lies.

  How can it be? He told her he was sleeping over at Yotam’s, but he’s in his bed, the heat of his body radiating from it. He’s snoring lightly, his presence clear and vibrant even in his sleep, and she hurries out, staggering her way to the couch. All their linens are stored in the bedroom and she will absolutely not go in there, so she has no choice but to lie down on the couch in her clothes, without a blanket, even though the night coldness is making her shiver. Maybe she’ll get up, take two used towels and cover herself with them even though they are slightly damp and cold, someone showered recently. The house is sending her mysterious clues, its residents are unwittingly punishing her, changing their plans without telling her, giving her false information, banishing her to the couch. She trembles under the damp towels. Why didn’t Omer go to the birthday party? Is it because Alma came? Did she come because she wanted to or did Mickey call her again, supposedly to alleviate Iris’s fears, but actually to show her that he’s right. Maybe he is right, maybe he does know Alma better than she does. There was such a rare sweetness in her voice when she said, “Mom! I waited for you.”

  Maybe Shira really is exaggerating. She’ll talk to her daughter tomorrow and try to understand what this is all about. After all, she’s so young, and at her age, things change quickly. Perhaps by tomorrow morning she’ll be able to stop worrying and in fact—she giggles under the damp towels like a girl in love—she will be able to keep walking undisturbed along the miraculous path being paved under her feet to the world where the years fall away, where she can step back among the flowering plazas of time, walk over and over again in the perfumed wadi, among the clouds of honey, on the only day of spring when it isn’t too hot or too cold.

  THIRTEEN

  She’ll be the first one up, shower in the children’s bathroom, and go into the bedroom, alert and resolute, to get dressed and put on her makeup. When she’s efficient, she arouses less suspicion, particularly when Mickey isn’t completely awake. And when he gets up, he might forget what happened the night before, her prolonged, ludicrous absence on the pretext of having driven to Tel Aviv to investigate Alma while Alma came to Jerusalem—clearly an especially botched investigation. She’ll get organized quickly, slip out of the bedroom just as his alarm clock rings, waking him for a new day. For what, actually? She knows so little about his daily routine, his relationships with his bosses and underlings, the work he has to do. How many women in distress does he help, driving them to and from various doctors? How many chess games does he manage to play secretly during work hours? Who are the people he talks to? And if he does suspect her, whom will he share his suspicions with? His need to socialize is limited, always has been, and since his close childhood friend left the country, he hardly ever spends time with other people.

  She makes a sandwich for Omer hastily and peeks into Alma’s room. It’s still dark in there and she seems to be sleeping deeply. She’ll text and ask her to call when she wakes up, she’ll even cancel a meeting to see her. “Mom! I waited for you,” she had said, such rare words. Did she want to share what’s happening in her life with her? She, of course, will listen with love, no judgments and no criticism. She’ll be supportive, we all make mistakes when we’re young, she’ll assure her, every mistake is an important lesson.

  Now here’s Mickey, lumbering his way toward her like a sleepwalker, surprising her with a smile on his way to the kettle, asking her nothing. Or perhaps it isn’t exactly a smile, but a sleepy nod of recognition, as if he has bumped into a neighbor on his way to the garbage bin. “I have to run,” she says quickly, “wake Omer, okay? His sandwich is in his backpack, we’ll talk later.” Then she’s in the elevator, in the car, trapped in moving objects, up and down, right and left, anything not to be in his line of vision.

  It’s good that she left early, she’ll have time to prepare for the end-of-year meeting with the supervisor. But it isn’t really that early, the first pupils are beginning to arrive, some emerging from moving vehicles, some walking, heavy bags on their backs, the younger ones accompanied by their parents. She didn’t walk Alma and Omer to their classrooms that morning, there was no need. They got out of the car together, walked through the gate together, and then separated to go to their classes. If she had been with them, the bus would have exploded without her. But what sort of conclusion can she come to, what lesson can she learn from that mistake? Learn from your mistakes—how hollow that saying is. Eitan made a mistake by leaving her, and both their lives were fatally damaged. Even their children, who owed their lives to that mistake, were damaged. Suddenly anxious, she recalls the Talmudic story of the man who breaks his promise to marry a young girl he comes across on the road, and marries a different woman instead. His children meet with mysterious deaths until he goes back to her. Whenever she taught that story, she thought of Eitan, but in the legend, the young girl continues to wait for him, even pretending to have lost her mind to avoid marrying someone else. But Iris didn’t wait, she has a family, which means that her children are in danger, not only his.

  She must send an urgent text to her daughter before she gets out of her car and is besieged on all sides—sweetie, she’ll write, call me when you wake up and I’ll come right away, we have to talk. But her fingers groping in her bag can’t find her phone, and she upends the bag on the passenger seat angrily. So many necessary and unnecessary things fall out, pain pills, chewing gum, Brazil nuts, shopping lists, sunglasses she’s been looking for these last two weeks, an open lipstick, pens, pencils, yellow Post-its, hand cream, sunblock, wrinkled forms. But her phone, her essential, incriminating phone, has apparently remained behind on the kitchen counter and she can’t text Alma, and even worse, with a single tap, Mickey can find out where she was last night. Or a random glance may reveal to him a new text that was sent in the meantime, several stolen words of love for the morning after, a text you can’t help noticing even if you aren’t prying.

  One of her teachers knocks on her closed window, neon orange fingernails dancing on the glass, but she signals her that they’ll talk later. She feels a sharp pain between her temples, what a fateful mishap, to escape him so quickly and still reveal her secret to him. She has to go back home and get her phone, but then she’ll be late for the meeting. That’s all she needs—the supervisor has been much too interested in her recently. Pretending to be concerned about her well-being, she takes note of how poorly she is doing her job. The day is coming when she will recommend firing her, and anyway, there’s no point in hurrying home, Mickey is already on his way to work. Maybe she left it on the seat and it fell, she thinks, foraging around under the mats, trying to recall which texts from Pain are still on her phone. She usually deletes them in the elevator before she goes into the apartment, and forgot to delete only the latest one. But that is definitely enough for Mickey, he doesn’t need a historical survey of their love.

  And if the phone miraculously escapes Mickey’s notice, Omer might see it, or Alma, she thinks in horror as someone taps on her window again. She straightens up and again signals that she can’t talk now, but to her surprise, a large hand holding the familiar phone waves at her. She opens the window, trying to hide her agitation.

  “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asks, the same strange and polite smile from the morning frozen along the width of his swarthy face. He must have enjoyed watching her search. “I figured you’d have a hard time without it,” he says, and climbs back into the car parked next to hers. How long has he been there? She didn’t noticed him arriving, just as she doesn’t notice him leaving now before she has time to mumble a word of thanks.

  She just
grabs the phone hungrily from his hand and immediately checks if there are any new texts from Pain, if there is any sign in the texts that they have been seen. “When are you coming? I’m waiting for you. Come soon, my love, I’m home,” she reads the last text that says everything to anyone who wants to know, but it doesn’t tell her whether anyone else has read it. Fortunately, there are no new texts from Pain since they said goodbye the night before, unless they were erased in fury, and that, at least, she can check. “Good morning, love,” she writes hurriedly, “did you text me anything this morning?” To her great relief, he texts back immediately, but doesn’t answer her question. “Why do you ask?”

  “Yes or no,” she writes, tapping nervously, but this time he doesn’t reply. Perhaps a patient has just come into his office, or maybe this is his way of protesting against the circumstances that require him to hide his love for her, turning his texts from a source of supreme happiness into a dangerous threat to her peace of mind. She puts her head on the steering wheel, what a revolting situation, those two men hiding essential information from her, each for his own reasons. Now she has to go into a meeting without knowing what she will have to deal with when she comes out of it. The bell rings and she drags herself out of the car straight into a swarm of pupils flocking to their classrooms. She is losing everything, all these pupils she knows so well, this place she built with her own two hands, she is losing Mickey, Alma. Before she can text her, the supervisor is standing in front of her. She’ll text her right after the meeting, Alma loves to sleep, like her father, and she probably won’t get up till noon.

  “Good morning, sweetie, call me when you wake up and I’ll come right away,” she taps into her phone when she returns to her office and drops onto her chair, drained. This time a reply comes quickly, but not the one she wished for:“I’m in the central bus station already,” her daughter writes, “bye for now.” What rotten luck, her daughter has eluded her again, the information has eluded her again. But she won’t give up easily, after all, last night she clearly said, “I waited for you,” so Iris calls her immediately. “Alma? Wait for me at the bus station, I’ll be right there,” she says. “We’ll have coffee together and then you can go.”