What is the point of all this, she should focus on action, and she sits up and turns on the lights in the room. Should she try to talk to the other mother now, find out if she shares her trouble? How difficult it is to give someone such news, but perhaps she already knows, perhaps she knows even more than Iris and can help her with information, details, tactics. She obtains several phone numbers of women with the same name. “Hello, are you Noa’s mother?” she asks in an authoritative voice, and when the answer is no, she apologizes quickly and ends the call.
But now a hoarse voice replies in a heavy French accent, “Yes, is everything okay with her?”
Iris reassures her, “Everything’s fine, more or less. I’m Iris, the mother of her roommate, Alma. I’m in their apartment now.” Then she explains unnecessarily, “I cleaned it and cooked for them. They work so hard.”
“That’s how it is when you insist on living in the middle of Tel Aviv,” the mother says, her tone critical, a chilling echo of previous arguments, and Iris already understands that she won’t be having the friendly conversation she hoped for between two mothers with a shared fate.
“Tell me, have you ever visited Noa at work? Did you meet the owner?”
She hears the woman’s heavy tongue struggling to get out the words. “Yes, I was there once. I don’t get down there very much, we live up in the Galilee.” She sounds as if her mouth were full of nuts, leaving no room for syllables. “He seemed nice and the food was very good. What did we eat there?” she tries to remember. “Chicken and nuts, maybe. Samuel, what did we eat in Noa’s restaurant?” she asks someone who is apparently sitting beside her, and Iris has to suppress a sudden fit of wild laughter. The thought of the nuts in her mouth turning into words seems hysterically funny to her and she chokes as she tries to replace the laughter with words.
“Hello, are you there? What did you say your name was?” the woman from the north asks.
Iris puts her hand over her mouth. What can she do to stifle the laughter? It seems as if only that spider’s corpse can restore her ability to speak, so she goes into the other bedroom, and to her horror, the black ball is gone, as if the earth swallowed it up. Did it only pretend to be dead? “How can it be?” she asks in a smothered screech very much like the screech of the mouse that was crushed against the wall.
Noa’s mother complains, “What are you talking about? I can hardly hear you, there’s noise on the line.”
Iris leaves the room, she has to get to the point, she’ll think about the spider later. “Listen,” she says, “I heard bad rumors about that bar. That Boaz they work for doesn’t pay them and he’s exploiting them in all kinds of ways. He’s made himself a guru and is controlling their minds and their bodies.”
Now it’s Noa’s mother’s turn to screech. “How can that be?” Each in her turn is a mouse crushed against the wall.
“I’m really sorry to drop this on you,” Iris adds sympathetically, “but I thought we could try to meet, figure out a way to get them out of there. I’m ready to drive up north to see you.”
But to her disappointment, Noa’s mother regains her composure quickly and rejects her firmly, as if Iris herself is the bad news.
“Listen,” she says coldly, her accent already so heavy that every word seems to hurt her, “you people in this country get mixed up in everybody’s business, but I come from a different culture where we don’t stick our noses under the sheet. My daughter is already twenty-three years old, and if she’s willing to work for nothing, that’s her choice, and if she does all kinds of other stupid things, that’s her responsibility, and I don’t intend to get involved. I have my own life! You Israelis don’t know how to let your children grow up,” she preaches condescendingly. “You stay too close to them. Noa is a grown woman and so is your daughter. What they do is their business, and what we do is our business.”
Completely stunned, Iris listens to her. “I’m so sorry I bothered you,” she mumbles.
The woman kindly forgives her, not noticing the irony. Somewhere up north, she moves her heavy tongue, “No problem, we just have different mentalities. So good luck and goodbye.”
Iris stares at the now-silent phone. She was wrong, those weren’t nuts in her mouth, they were ice cubes. What a selfish woman, the way she rebuffed her, preferring to live her life with no unnecessary disturbances, to crush ice between her teeth and not worry about her daughter. Upset, Iris paces the apartment, bends to look under the bed, moves chairs. Where is the resurrected spider, is it still breathing in some corner of the apartment, lying in wait for her? She has to get out of here, she can’t stay alone at night with the spider, dead or alive, and without showering, without changing clothes, she tears out of there, locks the door hastily, and hangs the key around her neck. The red tricot dress she bought in the market is sweaty and dusty and her scalp burns from the spider bite as she dashes out onto the sooty streets and is carried along in the stream of people without knowing where it’s headed. This city has always been alien to her and now the sense of alienation intensifies with each moment, with each step.
She doesn’t belong to the never-ending party on these streets, she wasn’t invited to it and everyone seems to know, which is why they look at her, at her dirty dress, her bitter face. Is everyone really so happy, or are they just pretending? This is exactly how she felt when she recovered from her breakdown after Eitan and began walking in the streets again. This is exactly how she imagined seeing him everywhere, a new girl at his side who didn’t remind him of that terrible year, of his mother’s death.
Where will she go, where is she walking to so aimlessly? She thinks she’s getting close to Alma’s bar, and actually, why not? She’ll burst into the place and start overturning tables and the plates of gourmet food will be hurled to the floor one after the other the way Alma’s birthday cake was hurled to the floor. Then that Boaz will understand that the girl from Jerusalem is causing more damage than good and he’ll throw her out of there. But how will Alma react, will she be able to endure it? For a moment, she sees her as her own young self, lying on her back, shrinking, being absorbed into the mattress, which was absorbed into the bed, which was absorbed into the floor, which was absorbed into the earth. She dare not force her to break off relations. She’s her daughter, her flesh and blood, even if she always felt that they were so different. But perhaps they aren’t really so different after all. For the first time, it occurs to her that she too has been enslaved all these years to a cruel tyrant, to her past, which has cast its long and bitter shadow over her life.
Her cheeks blaze from the heat, and her scalp itches as if the spider were still there. She scratches constantly, maybe it managed to lay eggs in her hair and dozens of small spiders have hatched from them. She remembers how she and Alma used to catch lice from each other because the lice they brought home from their respective schools created an endless closed circle, and they used to comb each other’s hair with a fine-tooth comb, laughing with horror, giving the lice names. But even that ended after her injury, when she stopped teaching, when she cut her hair, when it turned out that she alone had been the source of the problem, because Alma didn’t have lice from then on.
Horns honk only at her because she is the stranger here. How is she supposed to know how the traffic flows on this street, whether the danger comes from land or sea? The air is so damp and salty, perhaps she has already sunk into the sea and she needs to make swimming movements with her arms in order to save herself. But no one around her is swimming, and even so, they’re not sinking. Is there a lifeguard on this street? She feels as if she’s going mad, is this what the big city did to Alma?
Her feet hurt and she has to sit down, but the crowded cafés put her off. Everything that was pleasant during the day has become threatening at night, so she turns off the main street onto a side street and goes into a front yard in search of shelter. She doesn’t belong here, she is filled with past sorrows and futur
e anxieties, just like her city.
Exhausted, she sits down on the steps of the well-maintained building, and the black-and-white floor tiles, which resemble a chessboard, swim before her eyes. She needs help, she can’t be alone tonight. Maybe Dafna is here today, she has already forgotten which days she goes to her Tel Aviv office. It seems as if weeks have passed since she said goodbye to her angrily at the end of their last meeting, pushing her away the way Noa’s mother pushed her away today. No one thanks the bearer of bad news, but Dafna won’t hold a grudge.
“Hi, Dafi,” she says in a low voice, “do you happen to be in Tel Aviv?”
“I just drove onto the highway on the way home. Why? Where are you?”
“It feels like I’m in hell, or having an anxiety attack, and a giant spider bit me and Alma is sleeping with seven men in a single week and who knows what she’s doing now.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Dafna cries, “I’m on my way. Where are you?”
Iris walks out onto the street and gives her the address, then hurries back to the building, as if missiles are being fired at the city and she has to find shelter. She feels better now that she has some expectation again, the hope that their meeting brings, the knowledge that she will soon be picked up, that in Dafna’s car she’ll find the identity she lost here.
A short time later, Dafna picks her up wearing her Tel Aviv clothes, high heels, a pencil skirt, and silk blouse. “Are you cleaning houses to boost your income?” she says with a laugh. “Are the Board of Education salaries that low? No, don’t hug me, you’ll get my blouse dirty.”
But Iris presses up against her, puts her head on her shoulder and her arms around her long, slightly wrinkled neck. “Thank you for coming,” she says tearfully, “you saved me.”
“Should I take you home?”
“No, my car is here, Mickey’s actually.”
“So Mickey will pick you up tomorrow somehow, you’re in no condition to drive.”
“No, he has to pick up my car at the interchange first.”
“What interchange?”
“Forget it, it’s too complicated, and it’s not important. I have to stay, I still haven’t finished here.”
“It looks like this place finished you. Want to get something to eat?”
“Can we eat in the car?” She feels so protected in the clean, fresh-smelling car beside her beloved friend as she drives confidently through the streets, which suddenly look friendlier.
When Dafna parks, she hands Iris a lipstick and a bottle of perfume and says with a chuckle, “They won’t let you in otherwise.”
“It’s okay, I have my own.” But nonetheless she puts on Dafna’s lipstick, which is darker than hers, and sprays herself with her strong perfume. “I’ll turn into you,” she says.
“No problem, as long as I don’t have to be you.”
Dafna has always been better groomed than she, knows how to hide her full body with flattering clothes. They used to laugh that their daughters were switched at birth because Alma was as fastidious as Dafna, Shira as negligent as Iris. Maybe we’ll switch them back, she used to suggest sometimes, when Alma dragged her bored mother to buy her clothes or shoes, while Dafna forced Shira to try on clothes at the mall, even though she was totally indifferent about her appearance. Now, in her flip-flops, Iris follows her impressive friend to the impressive, beachside restaurant, her feet hurting, holding on to Dafna’s arm, although she protests, “Don’t overdo it, some of my clients are probably here and I’m taking a risk by even going in there with you.”
“Order for me,” Iris says when the smiling waiter comes over to their table. “As far as I’m concerned, you can chew for me too, I’m so exhausted.” Then, as if talking in her sleep, she tells her everything, from the end to the beginning, because everything has always led there, to the beginning, to the guilt, to her.
“Drop the guilt,” Dafna says, pouring water into a glass and handing it to her. “Feeling guilty is the most banal thing, it’s ineffective, and not even true. You’re a good mother to Alma, good enough, in any case. No one’s perfect.”
“That’s what I used to tell Alma,” Iris says, “that no one’s perfect, but it apparently didn’t help her.”
Dafna persists, “You said what you thought, what’s wrong with that? Today parents are afraid to be themselves, to say what they feel. You didn’t like her obsession and you showed her that. What were you supposed to do, measure her eyebrows with a ruler? And even if you were young, even if you were busy and things were hard, that’s normal, it’s not a disaster. It doesn’t explain what happened to her. There’s also a lot of randomness in all this, so many different things are involved. She moved into that apartment, met that man, not everything’s your fault, you can’t control everything.”
“So how can I get her out of it if I can’t control anything?”
“First of all, eat, this salad is excellent. If it had shrimps in it, it would be even better. You have a lot of influence over Alma. If you keep at it, you’ll succeed.”
“Influence?” Iris chokes. “What are you talking about?”
“I see her differently, Iris, when she’s at our place with Shira, she’s different. She talks about you a lot, quotes you, she thinks very highly of you.”
“Thinks highly of me? Maybe you’re talking about when she was ten.”
“Absolutely not, she was at our place not long ago and mentioned you. I don’t remember the context, but it was lovely, even Gidi noticed it. It’s nice to see you eating, by the way. You’ve suddenly turned anorexic on me.”
“That’s so surprising, what you said.”
“Of course she’s very attached to you, even if she doesn’t show it. I remember now that after you were injured, I used to invite her to sleep over a lot and she always refused. She said she wanted to be at home to take care of you. It was heartbreaking.”
“What am I supposed to do with all that now? It only makes me feel guiltier.”
Dafna reproaches her, “Enough with the crime and punishment, I’m telling you this so you’ll see that you have power over her, in the good sense, and that she loves you.”
“Loves me?” Iris mutters, staring through the window at the darkening sea, an infinite, ominous well. “I never thought about that. It should be the most important thing, but it actually doesn’t matter.”
“Apropos of love, what about the love of your life?”
“Oh, it’s complicated. You’ll laugh at me, but all of a sudden, I’m afraid to get in touch with him because it might hurt Alma. I love him so much, but I feel that I shouldn’t talk to him, even if it’s not rational.”
“Of course it isn’t. What’s the connection? You know I’m against breaking up the family, but anything that makes you feel better right now seems important. That’s your cell phone ringing, isn’t it?”
Iris takes it quickly out of her bag, it might be Alma, but it’s him. “It’s him,” she whispers, “I shouldn’t answer.”
To her astonishment, Dafna takes her phone out of her hand and answers the call, smiling broadly. “Iris can’t talk right now,” she says warmly, “should I give her a message?…No problem, I’ll tell her.” She ends the call, her eyes flashing. “What a sense of timing that guy has,” she chuckles, “how did he know when to call?”
Shaking her head, Iris says, “He already called twice today and I didn’t answer. It would be irresponsible, Dafna, what if something happens to Alma now?”
“What is all this black magic, suddenly? It’s not like you. Why make it harder for yourself? You’re going through a complicated time, don’t make it more painful for yourself, especially since he’s going to be at a conference in Tel Aviv tomorrow.”
“Eitan? At a conference in Tel Aviv?” she chokes. “How strange. Was that the message he gave you for me?”
Dafna chuckles, “I’ve seen stranger
things in my life, there are no end of conferences in Tel Aviv.”
“So what exactly did he say, that I should go to see him at the conference?”
“Something like that, that he’d be happy to see you, but only if you change your dress.” Iris smiles at her, maybe she’s right, maybe it’s a sign that she should see him. The abstinence she has imposed on herself is unbearable, her suffering won’t help Alma.
“What’s with Shira, by the way?” she asks, more awake now. “How come we haven’t heard from her for two hours already?”
“She has a date tonight with that guy. She listened to you and it actually worked. This is their second date.”
“I’m so glad. Let’s order dessert.” But Iris feels an annoying twinge of jealousy. Shira has a date and Alma is sleeping with strangers, but she won’t let that dull the sweetness of the fluffy cake. She’ll see him tomorrow, she’ll go to the conference. Her daughter loves her and she loves her daughter, but she loves him too, and maybe there is no momentous contradiction in that.
“Alma’s building is fantastic, classic Bauhaus,” Dafna says when she lets Iris off where she picked her up.
But Iris laughs, “That’s not Alma’s building. I didn’t notice that you drove back here.”
“So what were you doing here?” Dafna asks, but Iris finds it difficult to explain, to identify with the terrified woman who wandered the streets only a short time ago, and she directs her friend to the correct, ugly building. She suddenly feels slightly relieved, even the mystery of the spider and Alma’s absence won’t keep her from falling asleep. She’ll see her in the morning, she has influence over her, she’ll find the right words.
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