Pain

Home > Other > Pain > Page 25
Pain Page 25

by Zeruya Shalev


  Alma, now stretched out on the couch, also seems ready to calm down, to abandon herself to the comfort of appearances. “I’ll just rest for a minute,” she says.

  Iris gives Mickey an encouraging look—see, she’s staying, she’s less hostile. When they are willing to listen, she is willing to speak, and maybe, for the moment, that’s more important than what she is actually saying. But he gives her a dark look in return, which she has to ignore, and she makes herself ask in a cheerful voice, “Want a salad? Maybe we’ll fry some halloumi cheese?” Although they are lying motionless on parallel couches and don’t answer her, she goes into the kitchen feeling a sense of relief.

  Alma is here now, with them, and even if she came intending to admonish them, she is upset and asking for their help. If they are clever enough, they can get closer to her. They must not utter a single word of criticism, they have to show total acceptance, even in their body language. Iris leisurely sets the table for four. Omer will be home soon and they’ll sit at the table the way they used to, passing the salad bowl, the cheese, the olives, the eggs, the bread. Tomorrow is the first day of summer vacation, not hers, of course, but still, she can allow herself more flexible working hours, a few days off here and there. If she focuses only on her daughter and doesn’t think, even for a moment, of the opportunity she has been given to love once again, she may manage to feel a comforting sense, if not of happiness, then of satisfaction, the satisfaction of having avoided disaster.

  Perhaps she’ll lock her in the house and not let her out? She once saw a movie like that about the mother of a soldier, and took comfort in the fact that Omer was still a little boy. But Omer is no longer a little boy, and her anxiety about his impending induction into the army is growing more acute. And now it seems that even young female citizens need to be locked away occasionally in order to protect them from enemies, even unarmed, internal ones.

  “Alma, Mickey, come to the table,” she calls calmly, and to her joy, Alma jumps up from the couch immediately and sits down in her usual place. Does her improved mood have anything to do with the texts she has been receiving with such loud frequency, or is it because she feels that her mother is really trying to understand what she’s going through? Mickey stumbles in after her, heavy and slow, wearing khaki pants and a gray undershirt that shows his huge, sagging chest. Even though Omer is late, she doesn’t wait for him—for so many years, Alma was deprived because of his demands and now it’s time for some affirmative action. When their plates are full, she says, “Tell me more, Alma, exactly how do you practice freeing yourself of your ego? Maybe it’ll help me too.”

  “You bet it’ll help you!” her daughter cries enthusiastically. “Everyone needs help freeing themselves of their egos.

  “So how do you practice it?” Iris asks.

  “There are lots of ways, everyone chooses the right one for them. I think it works best with sex.”

  “Sex?” Mickey chokes.

  Alma explains with strange indifference as she eats, “Of course, sex is a tool and you have to practice using it just like you practice using any tool, with no connection to love or physical need. For instance, last week, my exercise was to sleep with a different man every night in order to reach the real me.”

  Iris puts a trembling hand on Mickey’s knee and gives it a cautionary pinch—don’t say anything, control yourself. Luckily for her, he is too stunned to speak, his mouth opens and he makes aimless chewing movements.

  “Do you know those men, Alma?” she asks in a defeated voice.

  “It doesn’t matter, some yes, some no, like it doesn’t matter who I serve food to in the restaurant. I’m learning to be generous with the most intimate things.” She speaks with satisfaction, as if she isn’t aware of how aberrant her words are. “I always felt that something inside me was holding me back. Boaz helped me to understand that the roots of my inhibition lie in sex, and I have to practice it in order to open up.”

  “You practice with him too?” she dares to ask.

  “Of course not!” Alma says in horror. “He’s not like that, he’s my teacher! I can see that you don’t understand what a teacher is!”

  Iris continues nodding, as if a spring is attached to her neck, but it’s impossible to feel relief, because sleeping with Boaz from morning till night would be much less appalling than sleeping with seven strangers in one week. That at least would be human, while what she is telling them now is monstrous. Still nodding, she admits in a faint voice, “I guess I don’t understand, so explain to me what a teacher is for you.”

  “What’s not clear?” Alma says impatiently. “We all need a teacher. School doesn’t give us anything, Madam Principal. Don’t take this personally, but we go out into life without understanding how the world works, how our minds work. School doesn’t teach us how to live full lives, how to become part of the cosmos. We have to learn that by ourselves and we don’t have the tools. At the age of twenty, we’re already set in our ways. I was lucky enough to find my teacher and he gives me tools, he teaches me everything from the beginning, as if I was reborn in his hands. He’s not an ordinary person, Boaz, he has abilities that we don’t have.” As she speaks, she keeps refilling her plate and her mouth—Iris has never seen her eat with such appetite, speak for so long. The tension between the innocent tone of her voice and the substance of what she is saying is staggering, as if entirely new norms have taken root in her. How did it happen so quickly? Will she ever be able to return to herself?

  Iris’s hands shake as she tries to move her glass of water to her lips, and the walls of the apartment seem to be shaking along with her. For a moment, she hopes it’s the sign of an approaching disaster, an earthquake that will destroy the building and bury them under the ruins. But she’ll settle for the direct hit of a missile launched from a hostile country, because no other solution presents itself to her. As she tries to decide what will be better for Omer, to be killed with them or to survive and be without a family, he bursts into the apartment, shouting happily, “I aced the civics exam, it was really easy.” Only then does he see Alma. “Hi, Sis, what’s up?” He ruffles her hair, but that isn’t enough for her, and she stands up and hugs him.

  “Mom, tell her to take a shower after we eat,” he says with a laugh, reverting back to the snitch of a younger brother he used to be. “Thanks loads for waiting for me. Is there anything left to eat?”

  In the commotion he creates around him, she takes her first glance at Mickey, and he looks devastated, his face gray, his cheeks sagging, his eyes downcast. “Maybe you should go to sleep, Mooky,” she says gently. “You look really sick.” He stands up in heavy silence, his eyes damp, and goes like a sleepwalker to the bedroom.

  “Good night, Daddy,” his beloved daughter calls after him in a voice that remains childish and innocent.

  He stops for a moment, turns his moist eyes to her with such a sad and painful look that he seems about to burst into tears or begin wailing. “Good night, Alma,” he says as if coerced, and continues on his way.

  “What’s wrong with Dad? Doesn’t he feel well?” Alma asks, showing such extreme unawareness that Iris hopes it’s pretense, a grotesque experiment being performed on human beings, perhaps another one of her guru’s exercises. You insist that you’re learning how the world works, she wants to hurl the words at her, but in reality, you’ve totally lost your ability to see what’s happening around you! Do you think your father is supposed to feel good about what you just told us?

  But she restrains herself, she has no choice. The aggressive comment might drive Alma away for a long time, so she replies, “Dad hasn’t been feeling well for a few days now. He must have caught a virus. How about some ice cream, kids?”

  Is there even any point to this deception? They aren’t children anymore and she is no longer the benevolent mother making them happy with a huge surprise, ice cream, although both of them are amused, take on their roles and begin
to bicker about their favorite flavors. “Next time, buy only Belgian Chocolate, who needs all that sorbet,” Omer complains. “See, Alma took all the chocolate for herself.”

  She returns to her role as the impartial mother worrying about everyone’s needs, saying with a smile, “You’re not the only ones here, Omer, your father and I prefer sorbet. Alma, share the chocolate with your brother.” But when Alma’s phone rings, she suddenly abandons her bowl of ice cream, hurries off in alarm to her room, and closes the door. A moment later, they hear a heartbreaking cry, a wail of supplication.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” he asks, suddenly serious, and it’s hard to believe that he was once a child.

  “What you see, Omy.”

  “I don’t like what I see. Your daughter’s lost it. I don’t know what she’s taking, but it doesn’t look good. Don’t pretend you didn’t notice.”

  “Of course I noticed,” she sighs. “I don’t know if it’s drugs, but something is clearly wrong with her.”

  He asks, “What are we going to do?” surprising her once again with his mature approach, his involvement. But she mustn’t become dependent on it, she mustn’t turn him into a partner.

  “Trust us, honey,” she says, “we’ll find a solution.”

  “I’m sure Dad is already working on something,” he sneers. Is there a note of satisfaction at his father’s disappointment in his voice now, after all the years Mickey was so strict with him and so gentle with his sister?

  “What do you want from him? He doesn’t feel well, he needs to sleep.”

  “He’s not sleeping, Mom,” Omer smirks, “he’s playing chess. I see that this family fails the reality test big time.”

  Straining her ears, she hears the familiar tapping of the keyboard from the hallway, which is immediately drowned out by the loud voice coming from Alma’s room. She hurries to her door and tries to overhear. “But I explained it to you, you canceled my shifts so I went to my parents’ place.” She hears her daughter pleading for her life. “How can I get there in fifteen minutes? It’ll take me at least an hour!…Of course I want to come!…Yes, I’m leaving now…Okay, I didn’t know.” And she bursts out of her room, almost bumping into her mother, who is retreating quickly toward the kitchen.

  “Mom, I have to go back,” she says in a shrill voice, her cheeks wet with tears. “Please drive me to the bus station, I can’t be late! Oh, it’s eight already, what am I going to do?”

  Iris puts on her sandals quickly and grabs her bag. “Keep an eye on Dad until I get back, okay, Omer?” Her son is busy with the ice cream left on the table. Then they are both in the elevator, in the car, and Alma, tense and frightened, doesn’t take her eyes off her watch.

  “You said he canceled your shifts,” Iris says, her tone patient, “so why is he angry that you didn’t go to work?”

  “I probably didn’t understand him right. I always have to be ready. I can’t come home anymore because it’s too far for him…Okay, let me out here.”

  “I’ll let you out when we get there, I’m taking you to Tel Aviv.” Though she really wants to take her as far away from there as she can, she finds herself driving obediently, as if she too has been caught in Boaz’s trap and is now his collaborator.

  This is how she used to drive her to pickup points all over the country when she was in the army, sometimes when it was still dark, always afraid she’d be late, always vaguely terrified of what would happen. They usually drove in silence, which she tried unsuccessfully to break, and here they are again, driving in the dark. She hasn’t slept for hours, but she isn’t tired, animal alertness has taken over, and she feels she is capable of anything now. For instance, she is capable of grabbing that man by his white pants and ripping him apart, running him over with her car, breaking his bones. She breathes heavily as she once again passes the place where she parked the day before. Is she doing the right thing? A short while ago, she wanted to lock her daughter in the apartment, and now she is driving her straight into the arms of danger.

  Alma keeps looking at her watch as if she is trying to keep the hands from moving with her eyes, and she texts every once in a while, tapping the letters frantically. What can Iris tell her that won’t sound like a criticism? “I’m sorry you’re so upset,” she finally says, “but you couldn’t know he’d need you to work. He has no reason to be angry at you.”

  “Of course he has a reason,” Alma defends him immediately, “it’s all because of my ego! I was thinking about myself again and not about him. If I’d thought about him, I would’ve stayed close by in case he needed me.”

  “But he canceled your shifts!” she says, unable to hide her anger.

  “He canceled because he’s angry at me, but I should have known he wouldn’t manage without me,” Alma says proudly.

  “He doesn’t pay any of the waitresses?”

  “How can he pay? He’s up to his ears in debt, but he gives us a lot more than money. That’s exactly how he teaches us to free ourselves from preconceptions!”

  “Right,” Iris mutters, and since her daughter is engrossed in texting, she doesn’t try to keep the conversation going. She turns on the CD player, and Mickey’s music trills in the car, lamenting a kingdom that no longer exists. The singer grows hoarser, her voice seems about to disappear. What does she see? What is she lamenting? Is it a young boy and girl that she sees, so alike that they could be brother and sister, sitting in the shade of a huge mulberry tree, dipping their feet in a spring? He went into the water and tried to persuade her to join him, but she was warming herself on the rock like a lizard. She might even have fallen asleep for a moment, and woke up when she felt his lips on her feet, licking her big toes. “Should we get married here?” he said suddenly, as if everything had already been decided and choosing the place was the only thing they still had to do. “I want my mother to make it to my wedding,” he added, saying “my” wedding, not “our wedding,” and that made sense to her as something between him and his mother, not between him and her. But when they went back to his house late that afternoon, surrounded by the honeyed air and tiny wildflowers, their pockets filled with leaves, they found his mother lying unconscious on the floor in a pool of vomit. They immediately called an ambulance that took her to the hospital, which she didn’t leave until after her death. And so he broke his promise because the reason for it was gone, and the urgency along with it, even though for her, all of it still existed, and she even had two witnesses, the mulberry tree and the spring.

  “What’s this, are you going back to Dad’s roots too?” her daughter asks sarcastically.

  “Why not? It’s wonderful music.”

  “A little weepy, no? Please drive faster. Why does the car smell of vomit?” She goes right back to her phone without waiting for an answer.

  “We’re almost there,” Iris says, surprised that she remembers the way so well. Without missing even a single turn, she reaches the street, which looks darker tonight, almost deserted. But when she pulls up to the curb in front of the window of the bar, she suddenly feels as if she can’t keep her eyes open for another minute. “Wait a second, Alma,” she mumbles, “I can’t drive back, I’m dead tired.”

  Her daughter looks impatiently at her. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Give me the key to your apartment, I’ll sleep there and go home tomorrow.”

  “Oh Mom, really, my place is so crowded and dirty, it’s not for you. Believe me, you won’t be able to fall asleep there.”

  “I won’t be able not to fall asleep,” Iris insists. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to conduct an inspection, I just need to sleep.” She’s glad to see that her daughter realizes that the argument will take up valuable time, and Alma takes her key, threaded on a black shoelace, out of her bag.

  “Don’t lose it,” Alma says, as if she is the responsible adult. “I don’t have another one, and don’t lock the door so I can c
ome in. Do you even remember where it is?”

  Yes, she remembers the gray building even though she was there only once, when they came to take a look and approve the small apartment—two rooms, a hallway, and kitchenette—she wanted to share with a girl who’d already been living there for two years. Iris was thinking only about her daughter leaving home, she’d have her own place, and didn’t pay much attention to the way the apartment looked. In any case, she didn’t have a good eye for real estate, but Mickey thought it was a bargain, and paid relatively easily. They agreed that in a few weeks, when she found a job, they’d split the rent until she started university, of course, and then they’d help more. It was a sort of incentive to encourage her to go to university. Now, as Iris looks for a parking spot on the adjacent streets, she thinks scornfully about the parents they were, at the calculations they made. How unimaginative we were, she thinks. People, it seems, are naturally unimaginative, it’s a fact that disaster always surprised them. And not only disaster, their daughter surprised them for the better when she found work in the bar that very week, giving them the hope that during the year, she would be ready to apply to the university. But now she is showing them what work is and what an education is, giving new meaning to their bourgeois perceptions: work without pay, sitting at the feet of a mad charlatan who sends her on obscene missions. But there is no point in thinking about that now, she has to find a place to park and go to sleep. Or maybe first go to sleep and then find a place to park, that seems more realistic at the moment. Maybe she’ll sleep in the car in one of the no-parking places and hope that the parking officer will take pity on her. But now she sees an empty spot in a crowded lot and leaves Mickey’s car there. Her car is still on the highway, and tomorrow Mickey will have to pick it up after work so she won’t be left without a car, because, she suddenly realizes, she will not be going home any time soon.

 

‹ Prev