Pain

by Zeruya Shalev

  If it weren’t the last day of the school year, she would have stayed with him, but she has so many things to do today, no matter how worried or tired she is. She calls every hour to make sure he’s okay, and keeps asking her secretary for more cups of strong black coffee. She can’t shake off the end-of-year sadness, the feeling that something has been lost prematurely, taken in the prime of its life. With bitterness in her heart, she listens to the teachers chatting cheerfully, looking forward to summer vacation, planning trips abroad with their families. She too has been offered a tempting trip, an invitation to join him at a conference in Rome, could anything in the world have made her happier? But there is no room for happiness in her life now, not that kind of happiness in any case. Don’t rejoice at the passing of time, she wants to tell all the excited new graduates who come to say goodbye to her, and she looks fearfully at the children she has known since they were in the first grade. If only you could be frozen at the age you are now, your skin still smooth, before pimples and scraggly face hair, before the army. What does life have in store for you, my dear little girls, she thinks, hugging the twelve-year-olds about to set out on a new path, I wish you could remain little girls. Alma was once twelve years old and wore a school uniform, came home at lunchtime and told me how her day at school was, and even if she didn’t tell me much, she didn’t keep secrets from me.

  When her office is empty for a moment, she closes the door and puts her head on her desk, trying to remember the summer Alma was their age and had completed the sixth grade, but nothing comes to mind. Apparently that entire year of Alma has been erased from her memory, and perhaps it never existed in it at all. She lost it because of her injury, because of the operations, the hospitalizations, the rehabilitation. Is that why she has lost her forever?

  “Iris, someone wants you,” Ofra says, opening the door gently.

  “Tell them I’m busy,” she replies angrily, but Ofra, who always looks after her zealously, says in a cryptic voice, “It sounds important.”

  “Everything sounds important,” she grumbles, “but nothing really is.” She lifts her head and sees him standing in the doorway of her office, embarrassed and unkempt, a thin, gray-haired man with a young man’s eyes, wearing worn-out jeans and a faded T-shirt that looks left over from those youthful days. For a moment, she doesn’t recognize him because he doesn’t belong to this place or time, he doesn’t belong to her, and the pain she’s had all day becomes unbearably stronger. “Eitan, is that you?” she mumbles, “how did you find me?” She goes over to him, puts her arms around his neck, and rests her head on his shoulder in plain sight of her longtime secretary, who hurries out and closes the door behind her. Apparently her pride at being right about the importance of this meeting is greater than her curiosity about what it means.

  “Eitan, my daughter’s sick,” she says, pressing up against him as if she is about to leave for a battle she will never return from, not to him.

  He strokes her hair and whispers in her ear, “I was worried about you, I knew something happened. What’s wrong with her? Can I help?”

  “It’s not her body, it’s her mind. She’s being controlled, I have to save her,” she mumbles as his lips burn on her forehead, her hair, and her brain seems to be on fire. She has waited so long for him. Are they too late?

  “My love,” he whispers, “Rissi, don’t give up on me.”

  She sighs, “Oh, Eitan, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.” She loves him so much at this moment, the expression of sorrow and shock on his face as it was on the days he came to her from his mother’s sickbed. As she looks at him, a flame of sorrow scorches her. She is so tired, it’s the last day of the school year and she wants to sleep now, standing up, with her head on his shoulder and her hands on the back of his neck. How much she loved falling asleep in his arms, nothing separating them, breathing in the air that he breathed out. “We haven’t slept together yet,” she whispers, “I want to sleep beside you and never get up.” She thinks of the frying pan she left on the fire that morning. We’ll burn so intensely that we’ll fuse together, no one will be able to tell that there were two of us. Day after day, night after night, we’ll be together.

  “Come to me tonight,” he asks, “or tomorrow? It turns out the kids aren’t coming.”

  “I wish I could, I have to help Alma, she lives in Tel Aviv.” Even though she doesn’t know how she will actually help her that night, or the next.

  He sighs, “Okay, I understand, tell me if I can do anything.” He kisses her forehead and lifts her head from his shoulder. “I have to get back to the clinic. Call me when you can.”

  She leans against her desk, swaying. Her office has never been so empty as when he leaves it, pale and sad, her old young man who was late in returning. She collapses onto the desk, yellow Post-its stick to her hair. I won’t give up, Eitan, I just have to focus on Alma now—does he even know her name?—I’ll help her and come back, wait for me. She wants to run after him, to promise him, persuade him, disappear inside him, but exhaustion and sorrow have turned her feet into stone. A moment later, Ofra opens the floodgates and the throng of pupils who have once again gathered at her door enters en masse. She stares at them in confusion, says goodbye, hugs them, wishes them good luck. She has hugged so many people that day, but her arms are still embracing his beloved back, for almost thirty years they have embraced.

  “What was Dr. Rosen doing here? I hope he didn’t come to enroll his son,” the school guidance counselor says as she enters the finally empty office carrying a pile of files.

  Iris asks in surprise, “You know him? How do you know him?”

  “He treated my mother once,” Daniella says, “and when he heard what I do, he told me a little bit about his son, who had just been expelled from school. Apparently seriously disturbed. I deliberately didn’t recommend our school, I didn’t like what he told me. Do me a favor, Iris, don’t accept him, we have enough trouble without him.”

  “You have no idea how much,” she says, but naturally, she has to know more. “What scared you so much?” The years have taught her to trust Daniella’s perceptions.

  “I had the impression that the child was lost,” Daniella says, “and no one really cared. The mother was still trying to find herself. The father tried, but didn’t know what being a father means. You know the type, terribly busy, feels guilty, buys presents instead of setting limits. Something there was not working.”

  “He told you a lot,” Iris remarks, digesting the uncomplimentary information uneasily.

  Daniella rolls her eyes and says, “That’s my karma, people just look at me and spill all! I waited six months for an appointment with him. He seemed like God to me, and then it turned out that even God has problems.”

  “Did he help your mother?”

  “By the time we saw him, there wasn’t much to be done, but yes, he relieved her pain. He’s a good doctor, and he’s a good man, I think, just a bit lost, cut off. I remember him telling me terrible stories about his son with a kind of smile, as if he didn’t understand what he was saying. There are gaps in him, he hasn’t really grown up.”

  “Wow, you actually diagnosed him.”

  Daniella smiles. “Yes, he interested me. I saw him a lot during that period, mainly when my mother was hospitalized. He was very devoted to her, even came to her funeral.”

  “Really?” Iris says in surprise.

  Daniella nods proudly. “I told you, he’s a good person. In general, pain doctors are more humane.”

  But it wasn’t his presence at the funeral that astonished Iris, rather the fact that she could actually have met him there, a year and a half ago, because she had been there too, crowded under an umbrella with some of the teachers, her boots sunk in mud. If only she had looked up, she would have seen him, and then perhaps they would have had more time together. A year and a half ago, she had more room for love in her life because Alma was okay then
, a fine soldier on an intelligence corps base in the field, monitoring the border fence. Apart from the fact that Iris had to wash and iron her uniform every weekend, she took up a very small part of their lives. Had they ignored the warning signs? Their difficult child was usually Omer, and they took it for granted that she was a bit reserved, closed. Her love life was minimal: there was a huge Russian boy who came to see her occasionally until he disappeared, followed by another one, very much like him. Mickey gritted his teeth when they closed themselves in her room, but none of them lasted, none of them even stayed until morning. They thought she still wasn’t mature enough, that she was a closed bud that had yet to blossom. It was unthinkable that it would be plucked before it opened—how had Noa put it, “Alma isn’t open, Alma needs to open up.” She shakes her head, how did it happen, how did it happen to us?

  “What did you say?” Daniella asks as she arranges the files on the wall shelves, and Iris tries to pull herself together.

  “Sorry,” she says, “my head is somewhere else.”

  “That’s for sure,” Daniella says. “Where is it? When will you learn to ask for help? Aren’t you tired of that rigid education of yours?”

  “Definitely, but you really don’t need my troubles, believe me.”

  Smiling, Daniella says, “What’s wrong with other people’s troubles? There’s nothing like them to make you stronger. You’re taking a vacation, I hope. Here or abroad?”

  “Here, I want to stay with my daughter in Tel Aviv for a few days.”

  “That’s great, I forgot that Alma’s a Tel Avivian now!” Daniella cries a bit too enthusiastically. “How is the little princess? I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

  Iris grimaces at the grating expression and says, “That’s so unlike you, Daniella. When we start calling them princes and princesses, they’re sure they deserve everything, and so are we.”

  “You’re right, “but Alma was always so princessy, with her dark skin and long hair, like a little Queen of Sheba.”

  Iris blurts out, “She just cut off all her hair and dyed it black, and that’s only the symptom.”

  Daniella picks up her bag angrily. “Damn, when they’re little, we want them to grow up already, and when they grow up, we realize that it’s much more difficult. Please call if you need help, okay? And don’t accept Rosen’s son, even if he promised you medical cannabis till the day you die. Bye for now.”

  She blows her a kiss, and after she leaves, Iris’s small office is once again flooded with so many goodbyes, thank-yous and good-lucks that she forgets to call Mickey. When he calls her, she forgets that he isn’t at work, and is surprised when he says, “You should come home, Iris, your daughter is here.”

  That “your daughter” means that their encounter isn’t going well, because he tends to speak about Omer that way, she thinks on her way home after hurriedly finishing the last round of farewells. But she has no idea of how bad it actually is until the elevator doors open and the shouting blasts her ears. She sees Mickey lying on the couch, covered by a thin blanket, one hand clutching his chest and the other over his face. Her daughter, his daughter, is standing on the other side of the living room table screeching at him. She must have been doing it for a while because Iris has only just come in and hears her shouting the same thing over and over again, “You ruined everything! You ruined my life! How could you do it? Are you happy now that you ruined my life?”

  She feels sorry for Mickey and wants to get between them, but she immediately changes her mind and walks over to her daughter. “Alma, I don’t understand, explain to me how we ruined your life.”

  Alma replies hoarsely—how could such a small face contain so much hatred—“You! How can you even ask? You, with your nastiness and suspicion! How dare you come to a place that’s mine and ask questions about me, insult the first person in my life who understands me, threaten to call the police on him? What were you thinking? Did you even think about me, or only about yourself, as usual?” Suddenly drained, she drops onto the small, flowered couch and says, “You ruined my life. With parents like you, it’s better to be an orphan!”

  What do you know about being an orphan, Iris wants to say, how dare you talk to us like that, but this isn’t the time for predictable responses. She has to surprise her, not to spout the obvious. Alma’s slender back bends and heaves, her face is buried in her hands—Iris has forgotten how tiny her daughter is, and for a moment is surprised at her smallness. She sits down on the couch beside her. She is still wearing the same dark clothes—how long has she been wearing them?—and she smells of sweat and cigarettes, and even slightly of urine.

  “Alma’le,” she says, putting a cautious hand on her back, “I’m so sorry if our visit caused harm. We were hoping to see you, to surprise you.”

  Her daughter straightens up, shakes her mother’s hand off her back, and shouts, “Surprise? A surprise like that birthday party you gave me when I was six? You still don’t know that I hate surprises?”

  “I guess I don’t,” Iris mumbles, recoiling from the stench of Alma’s breath. She was always so clean and well groomed, with her crop tops and short shorts, her barrettes and perfumes. “Tell me how it ruined your life,” she asks, knowing she is provoking another attack.

  Of course, her daughter shouts right back at her, “What is there to explain? You think Boaz needed that parents’ meeting? That place is not a school! Now he’s telling me, why should I have to deal with a little girl? Go back to your mommy and daddy, who know what’s good for you, and you’ll end up like them, it’ll be great for you! He canceled all my shifts for a week!”

  “I really don’t understand his response,” she says. “I mean, it’s not your fault we came! Don’t worry, we’ll make up the difference in your salary.”

  But it’s so difficult to say the right thing, it turns out, because her daughter jumps up again and looks at her, eyes flashing. “You think this is about money?” she says disdainfully, “You’re even more materialistic than I thought!”

  “You mean you don’t work there? He doesn’t pay you a salary?” she asks, clinging to the last vestige of outward appearances, to the calming certainties of the old world.

  “You think he should pay me?” her daughter hisses. “I’m the one who should pay him for everything he’s teaching me! I’m trying to repay him with work! But now that I don’t have any shifts, I won’t have any lessons either!”

  “What lessons?” she asks, stunned.

  Alma repeats her question, “What lessons? He teaches me! He’s my teacher!”

  “What does he teach you, Alma?”

  Mickey interrupts in a broken voice, “So how do you pay your expenses, Alma?” She realizes that he is already expecting the worst.

  But their daughter blurts out quickly, “I waitress somewhere else in the morning, how much do I need anyway! All I need is to keep doing my spiritual work, and you ruined even that for me!”

  “Please explain what that means exactly,” she asks, trying to show real interest, without doubt or scorn.

  Alma replies in a calmer voice, apparently caught between the need to guard her privacy and the missionary desire of every true believer to spread the word of the new doctrine. “I’m learning new things about myself and the world! I’m learning to become free of my ego and reach the real me, to free myself from all the preconceptions! Don’t think it’s easy, it’s like hewing stone!”

  “Give me a concrete example, okay? I still don’t really understand,” Iris says, trying to hide the anxiety that the word “preconception” arouses in her.

  Her daughter says, “For example, my laziness? You always accused me of being lazy, but now I know that it only looked like laziness, it was really ego! Understand? We talk openly about everything I feel is holding me back and I free myself of it! We break down the personality and rebuild it, but only with things we decide should be in it!”
/>   “Wow, that’s fantastic!” Iris says. “I didn’t know that was even possible.”

  Alma continues eagerly, “Of course it’s possible! For instance, I need to ask myself who the real Alma is because there are two people inside me, one good and one bad. Bad Alma is someone spoiled and too closed, who accumulates anger, who’s used to receiving and not giving, who’s locked up inside the experiences she knows. Her parents reinforced this bad Alma to bolster their own egos.” She goes on talking about herself and about them in the third person, as if they weren’t her audience. “Only now, thanks to Boaz, am I starting to know the good Alma, the real Alma!”

  “Tell me about her,” Iris asks unnecessarily, because her daughter continues speaking even without being asked.

  “Good Alma is open, her instincts infinite! She has no limits! She can fall in love, try new things, she’s free, she’s curious. You always told me that I wasn’t curious enough,” she says, as if trying to placate her mother, and Iris listens to her tensely. How satanic and clever to make a person believe that one’s weaknesses are one’s true self. Nonetheless, she senses there is a glimmer of truth in all that nonsense because she has always wondered why her daughter is so closed, so passive, so restrained. What a strange life she has, Iris sometimes thought, not very different from the fish she raised in the aquarium. After school, she used to sit in front of the TV in the living room watching the series she liked, sometimes the same episode over and over again. She went out only with girlfriends on Friday nights, in the army as well. Even when she communed with the mirror, there was no satisfaction, only tension. “Look, my left eyebrow is shorter than the right one!” she once shouted when Iris came into her room with clean laundry and found her looking in the mirror, horrified. “And if it is, so what? No one’s perfect,” she replied, and naturally, Alma stopped sharing her minor distresses with her. But now she is definitely sharing.

  Listening to her words, spoken in a more moderate, almost didactic tone now, Iris thinks the scene might give the appearance of normalcy—parents listening to their mature daughter telling them about her life and her studies—especially if you focus on the tone and don’t dwell on the content. When she calms down a bit, she begins to feel hungry and tired, all the ordinary feelings that fade in times of danger, and she says, “Want to come into the kitchen and cook something with me, Alma? By the way, the food in your place is fantastic! We haven’t had such a good meal in a long time.” She tries to speak lightly, leaving out, of course, the information about their bitter vomiting on the road.