Housebroken

by Yael Hedaya

  The man’s friends came into the living room, apologizing for being late and blaming it on the baby, and behind them stood the single man.

  “Look what we’ve brought,” said the man’s friend, and took a bottle of French wine out of a plastic bag.

  The man protested and said to the woman: “Look what they brought! You know what an amazing wine this is? What on earth did you bring it for? Are you crazy?”

  “Why not?” said the baby’s mother. “This dinner party is a historical event.”

  “Hysterical,” joked the man, and took the bottle. Now he stood in the living room brandishing the two bottles, and in the middle of all the talk about fine wines the single man was almost forgotten, as he stood next to the table in his coat and read the labels of the two bottles of wine that were excluded from the competition.

  Everyone introduced themselves and the woman collected their coats and took them to the bedroom. When she opened the door and entered the dark room the dog raised his head and the woman heard his tail thudding on the mat. She put the coats down on the bed. They smelled of the outside and of cold.

  23

  The single man was shy. He listened quietly to the animated conversation taking place between the two couples—the man’s couple and the woman’s couple—who immediately seemed to have found a common language, and to the subconversation going on between the man and the woman about their role as hosts. He also listened to the man’s friend, who drank too much wine and tried to force her way into both conversations. He himself hardly said a word, but when he heard there was a dog in the house he asked if he could see him. The man said: “I think he’s in the bedroom, should I get him?” And the woman said she thought they had better leave him alone, because he wasn’t used to so many people. The single man was disappointed. He loved dogs, he said. If he hadn’t lived alone in a small one-room apartment he would have owned a dog or even two. The friend stood up and said: “Come, I’ll show him to you,” and the single man stood up and followed her, embarrassed, to the bedroom. The three couples smiled and a silence fell upon the living room. The man put his hand on the woman’s hand. He was disappointed in his friend. She was drunk and obvious.

  The friend turned on the light in the bedroom and the dog woke up and blinked. He sat up and yawned and stared at the two people standing at the door. The friend said: “Let’s pat him,” and she grabbed the single man’s hand and dragged him to the dog. The man freed his hand from hers and bent down and stroked the dog. The friend bent over him and the single man and the dog smelled her alcoholic breath. The man stroked the dog’s head gently, and the dog licked his hand and the friend rested her hand on the single man’s shoulder.

  When they returned to the living room everyone wanted to hear about the dog, and the friend talked about him as if he were her dog. She talked about his history, his habits, and what he liked to eat, and immediately everyone started to talk about dogs. It was an excellent subject, because for a moment the single man forgot his shyness and gave them all the benefit of his extensive knowledge about dogs. He was a good-looking man, better-looking than the other men in the room. The men noted the friend’s good looks. In spite of the cold weather she was wearing a thin blouse with a low neck, a miniskirt, and black thigh boots. Her lips were painted with dark, brown lipstick, most of which, the women noticed, was smeared on the rim of her glass.

  The man knew her body well. Between one blind date and the next, between a one-day affair and a two month-affair, he would go to bed with her and in the morning, as he left, they would jokingly try to guess when the next time would be. The last time had been over six months ago, in the summer, a few weeks before he had met the woman. It was his birthday. Strange, he thought now as he looked at her, strange that he had never thought of her as sexual. She was his friend and he slept with her out of inertia. This evening for the first time he saw her in another light, in a dark alley, in the glare of the headlights of a police car. He thought: Six months ago, if I hadn’t known her, if she wasn’t a friend of mine, if I’d met her at a party, I would have taken her home and gone to bed with her. He was ashamed of these thoughts, but he was even more ashamed of his friend. He hated to see her like this, seductive and desperate. But now she was part of the past and her aggressive presence in the room was no longer a part of his life. This thought cheered him. He was glad he was at another party now, his party, which was, he felt forced to admit, a celebration of victory.

  The single man sat in an armchair and gave a lecture about dogs, and the friend got up and went to the table and poured herself another glass of wine. She didn’t go back to her chair. She sat down on the floor at the single man’s feet. The single man tried to move the armchair back, but the armchair was too heavy. He felt the friend’s back leaning on his legs, her spine and her shoulders rubbing against his knees. Slowly, so as not to attract attention, he crossed his legs. The friend turned her face toward him and smiled, holding her wineglass in the air, until he settled back in the armchair in his new position, and then she rested her head against the leg still planted on the floor. The single man told everybody about the dog he had as a child, a watchdog tied to a chain in the yard, and how the dog had guarded over him, growling at anyone who dared come close. Then the baby’s father told them about the little dog he had as a child, which had been bitten to death by another dog, and the single man, who listened attentively and nodded, put his other leg down on the floor too, and suddenly parted them both, so that the friend fell backward. She said: “Oops!” He said: “Sorry!” Now she was obliged to settle for the armchair as a backrest.

  The topic of the conversation changed from dogs to cars, and the single man fell silent. The friend turned her face to him and asked: “What kind of car do you have?” and before he had time to reply that he didn’t have a car she said: “I love cars. And I love men who drive fast.”

  “You haven’t even got a driver’s license,” said the man, who was sitting on the sofa, filling with hatred for her, his arm around the woman’s shoulders.

  “And he drives fast!” said the friend, pointing at the man. “You should see him. He drives like a madman! He should have his license taken away. I swear, if we weren’t friends, I would turn him in.”

  “That’s not true,” said the woman. “He’s a good driver. Maybe he drives fast, but he’s in control.”

  And the single man said: “I’m a pretty bad driver. I haven’t got a car. I haven’t driven for years.”

  “You’re not a bad driver!” the woman’s friend broke in. “You’re just careful.”

  “I love careful drivers,” said the man’s friend, standing up to fill her glass, waving it in the air, and asking: “Who else wants more?”

  Nobody wanted more. It was late, and they all had somewhere to go and something to do. The man’s couple had to relieve the baby-sitter and the woman’s couple had to get up early to see an apartment they were thinking of buying. The single man didn’t have any plans, except to get away from the friend, who sat down on the floor at his feet again, the full wineglass in her hand.

  The man and the woman looked at her and regretted the fight they had had earlier. The man could hardly remember anything about it, only that it was unnecessary. As for the woman, the words “love each other” kept echoing in her mind. She suddenly felt a surge of affection for the man’s friend. In her home, hers and the man’s, a real home where people cooked and cleaned once a week and kept a dog and had fights—which also provided a sense of security—a spectacle of loneliness had unfolded. For the first time in her life, the woman had been able to watch the spectacle, which she knew by heart, from a good seat, comfortable and protected in the gallery.

  The guests got up to leave and the woman’s couple offered the single man and the drunk friend a ride home. The man and the woman felt sorry for the single man, who didn’t have a car and didn’t have a choice and would be forced to sit in the backseat with the friend, who jumped at the offer, going to the bedroom to bring t
he single man’s coat, ignoring the other people and the other coats, stepping in the darkness on the dog, who finally released the growl she had coming to her—the first growl of his life.

  24

  Bad times had come for the dog. The man and the woman, encouraged by the success of their first dinner party, began entertaining people at home. They felt the need to see themselves in the eyes of others, and the dog, who loved them blindly, wasn’t enough. Almost every evening they had visitors. Sometimes one couple, sometimes two, and sometimes one of the couples was accompanied by an aggressive little creature, who lurched through the house, screamed and rummaged in the cupboards, smashed things and dribbled and peed on the floor and provoked savage instincts in the dog, which surprised not only the man and the woman and the couple responsible for the creature but also the dog himself.

  Whenever the couple with the baby came to visit, the man and the woman shut the dog up in the bedroom. Whenever the man’s friend came to visit, the dog retired to the bedroom on his own initiative. It was no longer his house but theirs; he was a tenant, completely dependent on the changing moods of his landlords.

  All this would still have been bearable, if the man and the woman hadn’t decided one night to remove him from the bedroom and close the door. He submitted to the new sleeping arrangements, but he no longer knew if he was inside or outside. During the eight months of his life he had only known the sensation of being shut in the man and the woman’s bedroom, not being shut out of it.

  It was the woman’s idea. It happened after their second quarrel. They had had guests, the dog didn’t remember who they were, but he assumed that the baby wasn’t there or the friend either because he spent the evening in the living room, in his usual spot on the sofa, between the man and the woman.

  This time they didn’t talk about dogs or cars. The guests talked about sex. Each of them told some amusing story from his past. None of them had anything to fear, because each of the guests, and also the hosts, had a partner to separate them from their pasts. The man talked about the writer, and his audience’s laughter encouraged him to exaggerate. He described her as an aging, frigid, psychopathic spinster, and himself as a scientist conducting an experiment. He felt he was getting his revenge on the writer, who had surely had God knows how many victims since and was still alone, in her enormous house, with her ramshackle garden and her requiems and her cats.

  The woman told them in the same breath about the young lawyer and the divorced painter, and as she spoke she pushed her finger into her throat and made vomiting noises. Everyone roared with laughter, especially the other women in the room, but the man was silent.

  When the guests left, the man and the woman cleared away the glasses and ashtrays without saying a word. The dog lay on the sofa, pricked up his ear, and waited. The silence frightened him more than any sudden noise and even more than the music that the man played at full volume when the woman was out of the house. He lay on the sofa and listened to their footsteps going from the living room to the kitchen and back, to the faucet being turned on and off, to the rustle of the garbage bag, to the creaking of the closet door, to the little scrubbing sounds of toothbrushes. His ear twitched, but otherwise he didn’t move a muscle. He sat like someone lying under a blanket waiting to pounce on a burglar moving around the house.

  The man sat down next to him and turned on the television. The woman put two steaming cups of tea on the table.

  “Where are the cigarettes?” she asked.

  The man shrugged his shoulders.

  “They were here a minute ago,” said the woman.

  “Well they’re not here now,” said the man.

  The woman stood facing him, hiding the television screen with her body, and said: “Is anything wrong?”

  The man was silent.

  “Are you in a bad mood?”

  The man nodded.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked and sat down beside him on the sofa. The man moved aside.

  She leaned over to the man, her elbow touching the dog’s back, and stroked his arm, and asked again: “What’s wrong?”

  “You ask as if you didn’t know.”

  “Because I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know,” said the man.

  “No, I don’t know,” said the woman.

  “But you know how to fuck,” said the man, picking up the remote control and switching channels.

  “Wait a minute,” said the woman and burst out laughing. “Are you talking about the stories I told before?”

  “What’s so funny?” asked the man.

  “I don’t believe it! You’re jealous!” said the woman and tried to tickle the man’s stomach, but the man seized her wrist and put her hand back on the sofa.

  “Did you have to tell everybody?”

  “But everybody told their stories. So did you!”

  “But your story was particularly disgusting.”

  “No more disgusting than yours,” said the woman.

  “That’s different,” said the man.

  “What’s different?” said the woman. “Tell me what’s different.”

  “I don’t know,” said the man, “but it’s different.”

  “Why? Because I’m a woman?”

  “Maybe,” said the man.

  “Are you trying to tell me that you thought I was a virgin when you met me?”

  “No,” said the man in a measured voice. “I didn’t think you were a virgin, but I didn’t know you had those kind of skeletons in your closet either.”

  “‘Skeletons’?” cried the woman. “One fuck and half a blow job, you call that skeletons?”

  “Yes,” said the man and looked around for the pack of cigarettes.

  “For three months you fucked a corpse and you talk to me about skeletons?” said the woman.

  “It’s not the same thing,” said the man. “And it wasn’t three months, and she wasn’t a corpse.”

  “Why?” said the woman. “Why isn’t it the same thing? Tell me.”

  “Why?” said the man and the didactic note crept into his voice. “I’ll tell you why: because men and women are different. Men fuck. That’s how it is. It may be disgusting, but that’s the way it is. It wouldn’t have been so bad if you told me that you were forced, that you didn’t know what you were doing, that you were drunk, but as far as I understand, and you explained it clearly this evening, you were in complete control, you even seduced them!”

  “So you would have preferred me to be raped?” said the woman. “It would have seemed more moral to you if they’d raped me?”

  “You take what I say and you distort it,” said the man, who got up to look for the cigarettes. “And you always do it. I say one thing and you hear another. What I meant to say was that I fucked because I was lonely.”

  “And me?” yelled the woman. “What do you think I was? And anyway, you know what? I take back what I said before. You didn’t fuck a corpse, you’re right. The corpse fucked you. She fucked you good and proper, her and her disgusting cats, and you know what? Good for her!”

  “Your feminism impresses me,” said the man.

  “And I didn’t know you were such a chauvinist,” said the woman. “And I’m not in the least impressed.”

  He walked around the living room looking for the cigarettes, but he was too distracted to find them. The woman saw the pack and the lighter on the top shelf of the bookcase, where the man had put them when he was straightening up the room. But she didn’t say anything. She watched the man turning over the cushions, bending down to look under the sofa, even moving the dog to see if he was lying on top of the cigarettes, and then she looked at the pack and the lighter mocking him from the heights of the shelf. The man sat down and covered his face with his hands. He shook his head from side to side, and then he rubbed his eyes with his fists. She didn’t know if he was grieving for her or the lost cigarettes.

  She stood up, went to the bookshelves, took down the packet, lit herself a cigarette, and put th
e pack and the lighter back on the shelf. The man raised his head and said: “Bring me one too, will you?” And the woman sat down next to him and put the pack of cigarettes and the lighter on the table. They smoked two cigarettes one after the other. They had nothing to say to each other. They didn’t know how to fight. It was a technique the man never thought he might need to know one day, and the woman relied on her instincts to tell her what to do when the time came. But now the time had come, and her instincts were silent.

  25

  That night, and the following nights too, the woman curled up in the man’s arms, caressed him tenderly, and tried to catch his eye. One minute she wanted him to console her, the next she wanted to arouse him, but the man could neither console her nor make love to her. He stroked her hair and ran a hesitant finger down her spine, and felt her body tensing toward him in the darkness. But then he muttered something about being tired and turned his back to her.

  The man was no longer angry. He was paralyzed by fear. He was afraid that if he gave in to even a single muscle he would turn into the young lawyer who did it without passion, or even worse, into the divorced painter who couldn’t do it at all. He was sorry he couldn’t be like the writer, that he couldn’t lie on his back without moving and let the woman do what she liked to him, without knowing if he was alive or dead, and without it mattering to either of them. And one evening the woman said that maybe the dog was the problem. She said: “You can’t perform with animals looking at you. You said so yourself.” She said this ironically, in revenge for the weeks when he had turned his back to her, but the man, who missed her and didn’t know how to turn back to face her again, listened to her and said: “Maybe you’re right.”

  This was the first time they had laughed since their fight. They lay on their backs in bed and held hands and made each other laugh with the accusations they threw at the dog, who after five minutes of this was blamed not only for the man’s temporary impotence, but also for the political situation and for the existence of wars, starving children, and earthquakes.