by Yael Hedaya
And I couldn’t explain to them that Alona was not yet part of the past, because it would have undermined the pretext for the housewarming, and I couldn’t tell them that Alona wasn’t going to turn into a banal subject of conversation in the kitchen so quickly, between filling bowls of peanuts and taking ice cubes out of the tray. I saw her in his eyes when he watched me coming in and out with trays of refreshments like a perfect hostess, and I didn’t know if he was proud of me or ashamed, and I could feel her breath in his silence which continued all evening and I wondered: How come nobody else hears her little wings flapping against the furniture? How come they don’t see her sitting with her legs crossed on top of the bookcase, laughing at all of us?
22
And for no special reason—maybe because I was so tired, maybe a delayed reaction to the burn, or maybe because of the stubble which suddenly made him look dangerous—I burst into tears.
He was frightened. Maybe he hadn’t seen too many women sobbing in his bathroom without any explanation or advance warning, while he was standing in front of the mirror, half admiring and half disgusted by himself. He turned around and bent down and held my hands and shook me and asked: “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
I said: “I don’t know.”
“But what’s wrong? What’s wrong with you, Alona?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Let’s go to the room, okay? It’s too hot in here. Let’s go back to the room and you’ll tell me what happened.”
“I want to be alone for a while. I’ll come in a few minutes, okay?”
“But I want us to talk. We have to talk!”
“Yes,” I said, “but in a little while.”
“I knew this would happen,” he said and looked at the mirror again, as if something had changed there in the meantime.
“What?”
“Forget it now. Maybe we shouldn’t have.”
“Shouldn’t have what?”
“Gone to bed.”
“But that’s not why I’m crying.”
“So why are you?”
“I don’t know. I swear. I don’t know.”
“You must be traumatized. Did you ever see a dick before?”
“Sure I did. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I’m concerned about you.”
“Do me a favor, don’t worry about me. Okay? I swear I’ve seen dicks before.”
“Where?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“In pictures?”
“No. In person.”
“But where? I want to know.”
“Why? What’s it got to do with you?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Boys, at school. Boys I fooled around with.”
“How old?”
“What a stupid question!”
“Why, is it a secret? Do you have secrets from me?”
“Fifteen, sixteen, maybe. Seventeen.”
“Seventeen! And you want to tell me that they didn’t try to fuck you?”
“There was only one who was seventeen.”
“And?”
“He didn’t try.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You think everybody only wants to fuck all the time? Like you?”
“So that’s what this is all about, Alona? You think that all I want to do is fuck you?”
“No.”
“So why did you say that?”
“I don’t know,” I said and burst into tears again. “You said you’d leave me alone for a few minutes and you’re just standing here and arguing with me.”
“But I want to know if that’s what you think: that all I want is to fuck you.”
“No.”
“Then tell me why you didn’t sleep with that guy. That seventeen-year-old.”
“’Cause I didn’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t attracted to him.”
“And you’re attracted to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“So why did you go to bed with me?”
“Because I wanted to.”
“But how could you want to if you weren’t attracted to me?”
“I was.”
“So before you were attracted and now you’re not?”
“I don’t know.”
“You gotta know.”
“But I don’t.”
“But you knew that you wanted to go to bed with me.”
“Yes.”
“Did you want to go to bed with me, or did you just want to go to bed with anyone?”
“With you.”
“You can tell me the truth.”
“But I am telling you the truth.”
“Maybe you just wanted someone to rescue you from your virginity.”
“No. And that’s disgusting. Don’t say it.”
“What: ‘To rescue you from your virginity’?”
“Stop it!”
“So do you want me to leave you alone so you can decide whether you want me or not?”
“No.”
“So what do you want? You want me to take you home and we’ll end it there? So you can run to your best friends tomorrow and tell them that you finally got fucked?”
“I don’t have best friends.”
“That’s impossible. All girls have best friends.”
“I’m not a girl.”
“Oh, sorry. All young women have best friends.”
“But I don’t.”
“You want to go home? I’ll take you.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“So what do you want? Do you have any idea what you want?”
“No.”
“Then let me tell you something: Maybe I’m a pervert and I really should go to jail but it’s been years since I was so attracted to someone and it’s been years since I had such a hard-on, like that seventeen-year-old of yours, and then you come on to me at the café…”
“I didn’t come on to you.”
“Yes you did. Your eyes were begging: Take me, take me, fuck me…”
“Stop it! That’s not true!”
“So I take you home with me, and believe me I’m shitting in my pants the whole way, and we go to bed, and it’s amazing, better than I thought it would be, because I had doubts, and you should know that it’s my first time with a virgin, not that it excited me or anything, and I saw that it wasn’t such a big deal either, all those stories about blood et cetera, unless I’m not the first, Alona, but forget it…”
“You are!”
“Never mind. As far as I’m concerned, it makes no difference to me if you’ve been fucking since you were ten. I’m just not sure what happens next, Alona, but I want something to happen, I don’t know what, but I don’t want it end as a one-night stand, and I want to teach you things, and I want to be with you, but I also don’t want to get hurt, and all this time I’m thinking: Maybe she likes me, too? Maybe she’s enjoying it, too? And I saw your face in bed and I thought that you enjoyed it.…”
“I did! I really did!”
“And you don’t have to pretend, either. Do me a favor and don’t start faking orgasms for me; you’re too young for that. If you’re not enjoying it, then tell me.”
“But I was! I swear I was!”
“How do you know if it was your first time? You were so quiet. You didn’t make a sound. I looked at your face and I thought: Yes, she’s enjoying it. It’s good for her. And now I think that maybe you were in pain. Did it hurt?”
“No.”
“And now?”
“A little.”
“And is that why you’re crying?”
“No.”
“You promise? Because that’s the last thing I want, to hurt you. I think I was a little too violent.”
“You weren’t. It was good.”
“Now you say that you don’t know if you’re attracted to me.… I’m sorry,” he said. “I went too far. I don’t know what I want from you. I hav
e no right.…”
It saddened me when he wiped my tears with the back of his hand and then my nose and even kissed the snot. “I apologize,” he said. “I won’t put any pressure on you. Do whatever you feel like. I just keep forgetting how old you are.”
“But it’s not important how old I am,” I said.
“It is, but I should have thought of that before.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “It’s not important.”
He stood up, washed his face, and turned back to me, drying himself with a towel and mumbling into it: “You’re still a child.”
So I went down on my knees and pressed my cheek to his thigh and with one hand he held the towel and with the other he stroked my hair and I closed my eyes and he dropped the towel and lifted my chin with his hand and looked at me and smiled and said: “Your hair’s still wet. I don’t want you catching a cold.” And I wiped my eyes on his thigh and felt it tensing and his hand dug into my hair. “Don’t you dare catch a cold on me now,” and he closed his eyes and held my face in both his hands and pressed it to his thigh, and I knew what I had to do.
23
Lake Kinneret was as crowded as usual during the Passover vacation, but this time it was also raining, and Matti, who was horrified by the idea of sleeping in a sleeping bag, got into the car and announced that we were going home. But he forgot the way. The children fell asleep covered with the towels we threw over them because we hadn’t thought of bringing coats, and Matti, driving fast, in the dark, confused, cursing, couldn’t remember how to get home.
“What’s the matter with you?” I yelled.
“Nothing! What do you want from me?”
“I don’t understand what happened to you!” I said, because this was the first time in my life that he had managed to really scare me. “What is it, Matti, don’t you feel well?”
“I’m fine,” he said, but when we hit a dirt road and the car sank into the mud and the children woke up, at first excited by the adventure but then petrified, I said: “That’s enough! Let me drive!”
“Why?” he said. “You think you know the way better than me?” And the wheels skidded as he tried and tried to get us out of the mud but only sank deeper.
“At least I can see. I can read signs. You can’t see well. Yesterday you complained that you couldn’t see.”
“I can see very well, thank you.”
“But why? Why are you being so stubborn, Matti? Do you want to kill us all?”
And there was nobody to turn to for help. It was dark and cold and deserted and the rain beat down hard on the roof and the children began crying and it was clear to me that we weren’t going to get out of there.
And suddenly he seized his head in his hands and began to shake and said: “I’m dizzy, I don’t feel well,” and when I said: “See what I mean?” he passed out.
I was trapped in a freezing car buried in the mud on a dirt road with two hysterical children and an unconscious husband whose head was leaning against the window with the seat belt choking his neck and I hated him.
I yelled at him to wake up and he rubbed his forehead on the wet window and opened his eyes for a second but closed them again and mumbled: “I don’t feel well.” “Matti!” I screamed. “You have to wake up!” He opened his eyes again and in the dark I could only see the whites of his eyes and he said: “I feel really sick.” The children tried to climb over the back of the seat and reach me, and Shahar held out his arms in a panic.
“Matti,” I whispered and slapped his cheeks. “Wake up!” I screamed. “Wake up!”
I got out of the car and opened the door on his side and unfastened the seat belt and tried to push him over to the other seat, but he was too heavy and he didn’t budge, and I slapped him on the face because what else could I do? But it didn’t help and his body slumped and slid halfway out the door and I could hardly keep him from falling into the mud.
I don’t know how much time went by before he woke up. Maybe it was the cold and the rain that woke him, and I shouted quickly: “Move to the right, Matti, please! Move to the right! Just a little! Try to move just a little!” And he dragged himself over to the passenger’s seat and let his head fall back and Shahar wound his arms around his neck so as not to lose him again, and Uri looked at his father’s dead face and asked me what we were going to do now.
I didn’t answer. I asked Shahar to take his arms off his father’s neck because I could see it was hard for him to breathe and I said: “Uri, tell Shahar a story.” And Uri said: “I can’t. I don’t know any, I’m scared.” I put the car into reverse and said: “Then tell him the story that Daddy always tells you before you go to sleep, the one with the elephants and monkeys and rhinos.” And he said: “There aren’t any rhinos.” I said: “Then tell it without rhinos, Uri, it makes no difference.” And he burst into tears and said: “Yes it does!” So I said: “Then tell it however you want.” “But I don’t remember!” he wailed. “Yes you do,” I said and pressed down on the gas pedal, and my foot slipped off it because the sole of my shoe was wet. “Do your best!” I yelled.
The wheels spun around and the car didn’t move and out of the corner of my eye I saw Matti staring into space with a drop of spittle dribbling from his mouth and I said: “Tell him the story Daddy always tells you. You remember. Don’t say you don’t remember.” “But I’m scared,” he said, and it seemed that the rear wheels were moving a bit but it was only my imagination. “I can’t remember any stories when I’m scared,” and I pressed the pedal again, this time all the way, because I didn’t have anything to lose anymore, and the car leaped backward with a terrible screech.
Matti and the children fell asleep and I tried to find the way to the hospital. First the main road, I said to myself, and then the hospital, and when we finally got onto the highway I felt my whole body trembling and I felt nauseated, and cold, and I thought that in a second I was going to pass out too, but of course that was out of the question, so I went on driving and the rain stopped and signs which suddenly looked so friendly began appearing at the sides of the road and Matti woke up and asked where we were.
“Near Tiberius,” I said. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“There’s no need, Mira,” he said. “I’m feeling better now.”
“Yes there is!” I said. “It could happen again.”
“I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow,” he said, “okay? I promise. Let’s just go home now.”
“No,” I said. “We’re going to the emergency room. We must, Matti. You haven’t been feeling well for a long time now. Maybe it has something to do with what happened on the night of the Passover meal.”
“But I already told you, it was the food.”
“You almost killed us all just now. You realize that? You can’t see properly, you get dizzy spells, and now you passed out. Why are you so stubborn?” And I reminded him that a week before he had woken up in the middle of the night in agony. “You remember that?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “And you were in such pain that you didn’t even know what you were doing.” “What did I do?” he asked, worried.
“You kicked Uri. You pushed Shahar away and you kicked Uri. You kicked him in the stomach. He had a large bruise.” “I didn’t kick Uri,” he said. “Don’t talk nonsense.” “You don’t remember,” I said, “you just don’t remember!” And he turned his head and looked at Uri, who was sleeping wrapped in a big towel, with a tearful expression on his face and Shahar curled up next to him, his back rising and falling as he breathed, and I said, this time without anger, because I knew that nothing would ever be right again: “You really don’t remember?”
He took off his sweater and spread it over the children, arranging the sleeves so that they would cover as much of both of them as possible, and said: “I remember,” and promised me that tomorrow we’d go to the doctor together. “But let’s go home now, I’m exhausted and I don’t want to spend the whole night in the emergency room, and anyway doctors don’t know anything. When did it stop raini
ng, Mira? It hadn’t rained so hard on Passover for a long time,” he said and touched my cheek, and my eyes filled with tears. “Yes,” I said, and he said, “Years,” and I had no idea yet that this was our last Passover, and the whole way home we were silent and the children slept soundly and when we arrived he took Uri in his arms and I took Shahar. We left the luggage and the wet sleeping bags in the car.
24
“It’s dark,” he said. “You have to go home.”
I lay on my back on the bed in the towel he had wrapped me in and listened to the sounds of the neighbors’ dinners, the clatter of spoons and forks, and I didn’t know what time it was but my hair was already dry. “It’s dark,” he said. “They must be worried about you by now. We don’t want to get into trouble. You can come again tomorrow. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Why don’t you come first thing in the morning?” And the strange thing is that I had no fear that by tomorrow he might forget me, this fear was acquired later on, with other men in other rooms, and maybe this is what made him fall in love with me, just this—when he looked at me as I tightened the edges of the towel around me and got up to look for my clothes and said: “So I should be here first thing tomorrow morning?”—because of my innocence.
“What time can you come?”
“Seven.”
“Seven? Then I better give you a key.”
And that was it. It was that simple.
He got up and went to the closet to look for a key, bending down and searching through the drawers, piling little boxes and envelopes on the floor, talking to himself, naked and busy. He stood up and looked around and mumbled: “Where could it be?” and scratched his head, and the insect bites on his legs, and he went into the kitchen, opened and closed drawers again, and asked: “Where are you where are you where are you?” singing to himself, and then came back to the room where I was standing all dressed holding my bag in my hands.
“I remember seeing it somewhere,” he said, and glanced at his books. “It couldn’t have just disappeared.… Here it is! It was on the dictionary.” And he opened my hand and put the key in it and said: “Close your eyes and I’ll give you a surprise,” and I closed them and felt his lips on mine, and his tongue inside my mouth, and his hands pulling up my tank top and unzipping my jeans, and we did it again, and all the time I was clutching the key in my hand.