Pain

by Zeruya Shalev

  “Sorry if I bothered you,” the waitress says, swinging her long, chestnut hair as she walks away. Alma’s hair used to be exactly like that, almost to her waist. The day before she went into the army, she cut it for the first time, not really short, but it was still not an easy parting, the first in a series of partings that continued into the next morning when, tired and tense, they took her to the induction center. She burst into tears, and when Iris hugged her, she was surprised at how fragile her body was, and even more, at the way she clung to them, unable to say goodbye. When her name was called and she stepped onto the bus, her shoulders shook under her shortened hair, and they stood there and waved at the bus as it moved into the distance, then walked silently back to their car feeling a vague sense of disaster.

  “Calm down,” they told her in the teachers’ room, “what can happen to a girl? Wait until you send a boy into the army, that’s the real hell.” But she didn’t calm down, she waited anxiously all day for the phone call that didn’t come till evening, when Alma sobbed loudly, “Mom, get me out of this place, I can’t stay here another minute.” They both tried to persuade her, “All beginnings are hard, you’ll adjust, don’t worry, you can always leave.” She did adjust in the end, but they were surprised at how difficult it was for her, apparently an indication of a weakness they had not been aware of.

  Several months after that morning, when she was driving her to the central bus station, she suddenly said, “You know, a day doesn’t pass when I don’t think about that bus ride the day I was drafted. It was so awful, I don’t understand how I stayed there, how I didn’t get off in the middle of the road. It was the worst day of my life.” She always said the most important things at the most inopportune moments, which seemed to minimize their importance and allowed no time to delve deeper into them.

  Did they dismiss her difficulties too easily? Because the moment she seemed to be adjusting, they also adjusted to her absence, to her empty room, her empty bed, which became a convenient refuge, and even before she adjusted, they had occasionally rebuked her for her inordinate complaining. “You can’t believe how terrible it is here, it’s like the Warsaw ghetto!” she cried one evening, calling from boot camp, and Iris, unable to hold back, reproached her, “You should be ashamed of yourself for comparing the two! I won’t listen to that kind of talk. You’re either ignorant or spoiled or both!” Then Mickey added gently, in his didactic tone, “You’re only in the army to keep the Warsaw ghetto from ever happening again,” and Alma laughed bitterly, “You really shouldn’t count on me, I can barely hold my rifle. It’s bigger than I am.”

  “Everyone contributes to the best of their ability,” Mickey said. “Stick with it, Alma, don’t give up on yourself.” She didn’t give up on herself, but in some elusive way, they gave up on her. Since she seemingly overcame her difficulties, they didn’t ask themselves why it was so hard for her, not the physical conditions but leaving home and childhood, which was more painful for her than for her friends. It apparently still is because it’s a fact that she needs a jailer to tie her hands and feet to keep her from going back home, to separate her from her parents and forbid her from seeing them or even replying to their texts.

  Now she recalls an evening when that difficulty was as distinct and palpable as Alma herself. It confused and worried her, but a few days later, she let it go because you can’t worry all the time, you always deal with the most urgent and present concerns. You walk through the world with a giant spider on your head unaware that it’s there.

  They visited her one weekend, and since the base was far away, they rented a room for the night in the family lodgings at her recommendation. She greeted them with her usual fragile happiness, which faded quickly, and although she had asked them to come, they already felt, even before dinner, how much they oppressed her. Iris tried, as she always did, to lighten the family mood, and with forced cheerfulness took out of the cooler the food she had worked hard to prepare at night after an exhausting day at work, hawking her wares as if she expected cheers. “Corn quiche, pasta salad, spinach pastries, lentil salad, halva cake. Who’s hungry?” she asked like a kindergarten teacher, setting the card table in the yard with plates, glasses, silverware, and napkins, proud of herself for not having forgotten anything. But perhaps she had forgotten the most important thing?

  They seemed like a nomadic family that evening, carrying their food, eating habits, and neuroses with them from place to place, the outer trappings of a family, mother and father, son and daughter, sitting around the table as if they were home. But they weren’t home, they were on an army base where their daughter belonged, while they were transient guests, merely visitors, and so there was a painful division between her and them even as they sat together and ate, even when they spoke, and mainly when they wanted to go to sleep. She was tired after her night of cooking, and Mickey was tired after long hours of driving, so they moved in and out, preparing themselves and the room for sleep. Alma, however, stayed in the yard, even though she had to return to the soldiers’ quarters.

  “Want to sleep with us?” Iris asked when she saw how difficult it was for her to leave, and Alma said, “I don’t know, is there room for me?” Iris pulled out a folding bed for her from under her bed—Omer was already sound asleep on the one that had been under Mickey’s—and Alma stood there hesitantly until she said, “Never mind, I’ll go back to barracks.” But she didn’t, she remained standing in the doorway instead, watching Iris as she undressed and put on her nightgown. Then she said again, “So I’ll go back to my room,” but she went back outside and sat down on the grass next to the card table like a faithful watchdog, and Iris, who couldn’t close the door while she was still there, went outside in her thin nightgown. “Is something bothering you?” she asked, “do you want to talk to me about something?”

  “We can talk if you feel like it,” Alma said, and Iris asked her a few questions, which she answered briefly, about the training course, her girlfriends, the job she would have. When she realized that her daughter didn’t feel like talking, she said with an apologetic smile, “I’m very tired, I cooked half the night,” and Alma replied quickly, “So go to sleep Mom.”

  “But what about you, aren’t you tired?” Iris asked, and Alma said, “Yes, I’m tired,” but once again her words did not lead to action. “So good night, sweetie,” Iris said as she stood up, “we’ll talk some more tomorrow.”

  “Good night, Mom,” Alma said, and remained seated, watching her mother leave with a mysterious air of expectation. But it wasn’t a particularly good night because she couldn’t fall asleep. She tossed and turned with worry, unable to understand what Alma had actually wanted, afraid to go and see if she was still there, beside the card table, her profile sharp and sad, a little girl in uniform.

  Now she is ready to believe that if she had stayed with her all night and hadn’t given in to her tiredness, she might have prevented her from falling into the trap that will demand concessions of her much more painful than one sleepless night.

  That’s how it is, she sighs loudly, we’ll always miss the previous stage in the obstacle course of our lives. But she won’t think about that now, maybe it’s only a temporary concession, only a postponement. After all, she waited decades for Eitan to come back to her, and a few more months won’t matter, he’ll wait for her just as she waited for him. But apparently even thinking about him put Alma at risk, because now, to her horror, Sasha texts, “It doesn’t look good,” and she replies quickly, “What’s happening?”

  “She changed into a short dress, put on a lot of makeup, is leaving the restaurant now,” he texts. “Follow her!” she writes, but he is more levelheaded than she, “Not a good idea, it’ll make her and the people here suspicious. I have to stay.”

  She admits that he’s right, but she herself has no problem arousing suspicion, they already think she’s weird, at best, so she stands up quickly and announces, “I have to run, how much do I owe?
” The waitress walks over to the cash register with annoying slowness and she tries to hurry her along. “Please, I’m in a big rush, my daughter is in the emergency room,” she hears herself say, and immediately pulls out a large bill and doesn’t wait for change. Mickey would go crazy at the waste of money, he would completely lose it if he were with her now, he would run down the street screaming, just as she is now, “Alma, where are you? Alma, wait for me!” She hasn’t dared to run since the injury, but now she wobbles on her platinum pelvis, feeling the fractured bones that the best surgeons had labored long hours to repair coming apart again. “Alma, come back, Come home!”

  Of course, she has no idea whether the street she is running on will bring her closer to or farther away from her daughter, or whether her shouts can be heard over the noise of the cars, conversations, and music in the open cafés. Nonetheless, she keeps shouting and ignores the looks she’s getting, keeps shouting as if she were alone in the streets, her eyes darting around in search of a skinny girl in a short dress, a needle in a haystack. Until her feet, surprised by the running, collide with a bump in the street that suddenly becomes the sidewalk and she falls flat out, as unyielding as a tree trunk, her hands flailing in helpless shock. In a flash of understanding and acceptance, a few seconds before her body meets the sidewalk, she realizes that the crash is inevitable.

  Those were precisely the seconds she didn’t have that morning, the seconds when the understanding and the injury are joined. No bird sang, no bull roared, no hawk soared, only she soared over the roof of her smashed car, observing the inhuman scene of human pain from a bird’s-eye view. She remembers that she silently parted from her mother and Mickey and thought about her father, who would reach out from the sky and gather her to him, because they were the same age then. But she utterly and surprisingly forgot to bid farewell to her children, forgot that she even had children, while now, she can think only of Alma. Where have you gone, what are you doing, when will you come back?

  “Alma,” she groans, lying immobile on the sidewalk, on her stomach, her hands at her sides as if she has lain down to sleep, and the passersby who hurry toward her from every direction ask, “Are you okay?” How strange everyone in this city is, they see a person who is totally not okay and ask her over and over again if she’s okay!

  “Can you get up?” they ask. “Did you hit your head? Do you want us to call an ambulance?” She hears a mixture of voices and questions that she doesn’t understand, that she understands but can’t answer, can answer but doesn’t want to. She is too tired and it’s time to go to sleep, she had too much to drink and she needs to sleep, it doesn’t matter where. She’s safer here on the sidewalk than in Alma’s bed, and she turns onto her back with an effort, runs her tongue around the inside of her mouth to check that her teeth are intact. Her body is strewn with pain the way the sky is strewn with stars, and she sees them for a moment when she blinks. It’s strange that the stars are so clear in the middle of the city, but they won’t keep her from falling asleep, nothing will keep her from falling asleep now, not even the talking going on above her head as if she were a baby or a frail old woman.

  “She was just in our place! Her daughter’s in the emergency room!” she hears someone shout, and is momentarily alarmed, Alma’s in the emergency room! That’s why she was running after her in the streets, to save her from disaster, Alma’s in the emergency room! Then she remembers the waitress, who has apparently just finished her shift. “What hospital is your daughter in?” she asks as she bends over her, the ends of her long chestnut hair brushing against Iris’s cheeks. She always taught her pupils that our lies come back to haunt us, and that’s what’s happening to her now. Sometimes lies turn into a truth that works against us, she used to say, exaggerating to make the warning stronger, and now that exaggeration is shaking her to her core. Whom did Alma go to meet, where did he send her so heavily made up? This city is full of drunks and junkies, she has to rescue her, she can’t sleep here. She’ll ignore the stars of pain and continue searching for her, if she scours street after street, she will undoubtedly find her one day. She tries to lean on her left hand, which hurts less, among all the pairs of legs that have gathered around her. At least ten people circle her, as if they are about to begin prayer.

  If only she can spring up and float above the streets. When they look down at her, they’ll find that she’s gone, that she left nothing behind, and they’ll have to go back to minding their own business instead of hers. Perhaps Noa’s mother is right, people here are busybodies. Now another pair of legs joins the crowd, particularly large feet in light-colored sneakers, another busybody leaning over her. But how does he know her name?

  “Iris! What happened? Did you fall? I’ve been looking for you.”

  She groans, “Sasha, I lost her, I couldn’t find her.”

  “She’ll come back,” he says. “Let me take you home.” The disappointed crowd disperses instantly, the passersby have gathered in vain, have given their time in vain, and now the event is over before they can enjoy it to the fullest. “That man is dangerous,” Sasha says, sitting down on the sidewalk beside her and lighting a cigarette. “I would have crushed him with my hands, then I would have stepped on him, kicked him, and thrown him in the garbage.”

  She laughs despite the pain and says, “You’re back to your old self. That’s exactly how you spoke when you were a boy.”

  He gives her an embarrassed smile, apologetic and proud at the same time of the child he once was, and justifiably so. He was brave and tenacious, believed that he was surrounded by enemies and refused to surrender, and now his presence beside her imbues her with a remarkable sense of power. How did he suddenly appear in her life like a walking miracle, how did she even think of fighting this battle without him?

  “So how are you feeling?” he asks, studying her carefully as he crushes a cigarette butt with his gigantic foot. “How bad is the pain, where do you hurt? I took a medic course in the army.”

  “My right hand, my right knee, my ribs.”

  He checks her hand and asks, “Can you move your fingers?”

  “Yes, but barely.”

  “Your hand is really swollen. We’ll call an ambulance to take you to the emergency room.”

  “Absolutely not, let’s wait till morning. Please, Sasha,” she implores as if she were a little girl and he her father.

  He probes her hand and says, “Okay, we can go to the clinic tomorrow. It depends on how much it hurts you.”

  “I’d rather wait,” she says gratefully. “Help me up?”

  Slowly and carefully, he picks her up from the sidewalk and stands her on her feet. A taxi has already parked next to them, and he helps her lie down on the back seat for the short ride; in a few minutes they reach the gray building. He pays the driver, bends over her, and in an instant she is in his arms like a bride being carried by her groom into their new home on their wedding night. Her head rests on the striped shirt that covers his broad chest, his skin is smooth, his heart strong. Oh Eitan, she sighs, we thought that we were godlike, that we could return to the past and correct all our mistakes.

  At the building entrance, he freezes in place and she feels his muscles tense. She shifts her gaze and sees her daughter sitting on the steps, wearing a very short yellow dress, her made-up eyes wide with shock at what she sees. She jumps up and runs toward them. “I told you I didn’t have a key!” She blurts out the complaint that has apparently been waiting on the tip of her tongue, but immediately gets a grip on herself and asks, “What happened? Who’s that? What’s going on here?”

  “You’ll find the key in her bag, Alma,” Sasha says. “Your mother fell. She went out to look for you and she fell.”

  Alma obeys angrily, foraging around in her bag. “To look for me?” she barks as she turns the key in the lock. “Why was she looking for me?” Only when the door opens and the light comes on does she look at him and point an accusing f
inger. “It’s you! You were at the bar just now! What’s going on here?”

  “Where’s your bed, Alma?” he asks impatiently, as if he is the responsible adult and she an annoying child. “Your mother needs to lie down first and get treatment before she can answer your questions.” She obeys him again and points to her bedroom door. As Iris listens to them, she realizes that they are talking over her head, like the people on the street, but this time she likes it, she likes it so much that she is ready to sink into sleep and let Sasha explain everything however he wants to. Alma has seen them now, and he won’t be able to sit there pretending to be a customer anyway, so her long-term plan has just been ruined, leaving only the present, this night, when her entire body has been battered. Did she ever have anything but the present? she wonders, but she has refused to submit to it, tried to control it with all her newsletters, with all the plans she made, and now it says to her: I am not an echo of past memories, I am not a bridge to future plans, I am all you have, the essence of your existence. Trust me, because you have no choice.

  But how can she trust it? The pain and anger are growing stronger every minute. It has all been for nothing because after she cleaned, cooked, shopped, and organized with a sense of joyous omnipotence, after she decided to appoint herself her daughter’s housekeeper in the hope that it would help her get used to her presence, she has all at once become useless, ineffective, and inefficient, an unnecessary burden.

  Why did she have to look for her, instead of waiting here to welcome her when she came back, to feed her and put her to bed, and do so with patient consistency, day after day. I’m here for you no matter where you’ve been and what you’ve done, the important thing is that your mom is waiting for you in a clean home with a nutritious meal. Only now, after crashing onto the sidewalk, has it become clear to her that she planned to do exactly that, and she realizes sadly that she will have to return home very soon and stay there as long as she needs help, because even if she has no broken bones, her movement will be limited. Obviously she can’t clean or cook or take care of anyone, which makes her presence in this apartment in this city pointless, and she shakes her head with growing anger just as Sasha comes over with a small bowl and some cotton. “We have to clean your wounds,” he says, bending over her bare knee and gently swabbing it with cotton soaked in soapy water. Then he moves on to her fingertips, where the cuts and scrapes also turn out to be superficial, and he once again checks the movement of her fingers. “Maybe you just came down hard but didn’t break anything,” he says. “I’ll bandage you for the time being, it’ll help with the pain tonight, and tomorrow we’ll go check it out. Do you have any bandages here?” he asks Alma.