The Fairest Among Women

by Dalya Bilu

  “You’re a beautiful woman.” He repeated the speech he had rehearsed during the long bus journey. “You’re a big, beautiful woman and I’ve wanted to paint you for years,” he confessed, and pulled out of the shabby cardboard portfolio a collection of newspaper cuttings all about Rosa.

  “I’ve been following your career from an early age,” he announced with lowered eyes like a youngster declaring his love for the first time in his life. “To my regret, I was obliged to paint you from the photographs that appeared in the newspapers. I’ve been dreaming of painting you for years, ever since I arrived in the country,” he said shyly. And when she looked at him questioningly, he added that now that he had improved as a painter and gained a reputation and held exhibitions in Israel and abroad, he had finally plucked up the courage to knock on her door and request what he had dreamed of requesting for nearly forty years.

  Then he removed several large sheets of paper from a separate compartment in the portfolio and showed Rosa his paintings. She gazed in embarrassment at the large woman smeared in pastels spread out before her in poses that brought a blush to her cheeks. The woman looked back at her curiously. Rosa could not ignore the fact that the woman in the pictures bore an astonishing resemblance to her. Shmuel watched her as she looked at his work, gathered up the drawings, and apologized for portraying her in this manner.

  “Please understand,” he tried to explain. “Since I couldn’t paint the original, I painted you as you appeared in the pictures in the newspapers, and added a lot of imagination.”

  “She really does look like me,” she admitted in the end, after a long, embarrassed silence.

  “Would you like to see more of my work?” he asked shyly.

  “Gladly,” she replied, and watched him as he removed more paintings from the portfolio with trembling hands. Slowly and carefully he laid the drawings on the living room table, and when there was no more room, he spread them on the floor, on the sofa next to Rosa and on the chair standing by its side. From all the drawings fat women looked out at her, most of them naked and some of them seminaked.

  “This is Eve,” he explained as he picked up a picture of an enormous woman. Her crotch and heavy breasts were symbolically adorned with tiny fig leaves, and a thick, brightly colored snake with a vicious expression was slithering revoltingly round her rolls of fat.

  “And this is the matriarch Sarah.” He pointed to a picture of a giantess whose face bore a strong resemblance to Rosa’s. “And this is Bathsheba bathing on the roof, and this is the Queen of Sheba and this is Jezebel.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the immense figures filling the pages. It seemed to Rosa at that moment as if Shmuel were introducing her to his closest kin and the women nearest and dearest to him in the world.

  After presenting all his women to her, he quickly put all the pictures back in the portfolio, as if he regretted having exposed his loves in their nakedness, and had decided from now on to guard their privacy from the eyes of the world. When he took his leave of her at the door, he avoided looking at the defective child who spoiled the beauty of his vision, and asked Rosa again if she would agree to pose for him. With a blush spreading over her cheeks and creeping down her chest, she replied in a confidential whisper that she would have to think about it and that he should come back the next day.

  That night she consulted her seven children on the telephone. The girls were excited and told her that it was an opportunity not to be missed, and it was only the queens and princesses of Europe that had their portraits painted by famous painters. The boys sounded suspicious. Leslie-Shimon, Jackie-Ya’akov, and James-Gad demanded in one voice, as if they had agreed beforehand, that if she agreed to pose for him, it had to be on condition that she was fully dressed. On no account, they added threateningly, was she to take off her clothes. And Rosa, to whom such a thing had never even occurred, was insulted and hung up on all three of them angrily.

  The next day, when Shmuel arrived, she answered in the affirmative.

  “Then come to my studio tomorrow morning,” he said quickly, before she could change her mind.

  “I hardly go out of the house to do the shopping. If you want to paint me, it will have to be here,” she announced, hoping that he would agree.

  Shmuel opened the shutters, drew the curtains, examined the light, and agreed. But before he left he told her that she would have to be very patient, because the work could take a long time.

  When Ruthie came to take Angel to her day care she stared shamelessly at Shmuel, who was making himself at home and setting up his easel in the living room with a lot of noise. She looked at his colorful hands, examined him from top to bottom, winked encouragingly at Rosa, and left the house with Angel in her arms. Rosa settled down heavily on the sofa wearing a silk dress patterned with big red poppies. He looked at her with his eyes shining, grinning from ear to ear, went up to her, and showed her how he wanted her to sit, casually touching her hand as he did so.

  Afterward she would tell Rachelle and Ruhama, who wanted to hear all the details, that when his hand brushed against hers, she felt as if her hand were on fire. For hours she sat opposite him like a stone, and after the pounding of her heart was stilled, her limbs went to sleep one by one, until she fell asleep herself. She woke to the sound of the easel being folded up and the tubes of paint being returned to their box.

  “Show me how I came out,” she asked drowsily.

  Shmuel refused. “Strictly forbidden,” he said with a mischievous smile. “I can’t show it to you until it’s finished, otherwise you’ll refuse to sit for me.”

  The next day he came at eight on the dot, and he went on coming during the following weeks, and Rosa’s taste for life returned. Every morning she would wake up two hours before he was due and prepare herself in his honor. First she would bathe in the Jacuzzi, and after the hot water had turned her skin red and sent the blood coursing through her veins, and she felt her flesh tingling enjoyably in the bubbles, she would rub the hard skin off her soles with a pumice stone, separate her toes, and wash carefully between them. When she was through with her feet she turned her attention to her armpits, scrubbed and shaved them ruthlessly, and went on from there to her breasts, lathering and massaging them in ever-diminishing circles until she reached the pink circles round the erect nipples. With her flesh prickling deliciously she would descend to her nether parts and lather her tangled bush of curls. Finally she would soap a finger, crook her hand behind her, fondle her buttocks, and absentmindedly insert her soapy finger deep inside her rectum, cleaning it thoroughly.

  When her body was clean inside and out she would turn her attention to her hair, washing it with imported shampoo, anointing it with a conditioner that made it feel like silk, and combing it in the elaborate curls she favored. As she sat in front of the mirror and made up her face and eyes, she would feel the sensations of cleanliness, freshness, and anticipation that used to make her body tingle when Shraga washed her. But she would quickly push aside these memories of her old love in order to make room for the new one that was beginning to ferment inside her. After eating her breakfast she would paint her lips with shiny red lipstick, repair her eye makeup, put on her silk dress with the poppy pattern, and wait excitedly for him to appear. And when he set up his easel with the painting and looked at her with adoring eyes, her body would be racked with the sweet pain of a vacuum longing to be filled. With her eyes glazed, she would settle into her position on the sofa and wait for the first strokes of the brush on the canvas, which made her flesh prickle with a pleasure such as she had never felt before, as if the brush were sweeping over her actual flesh and tickling it in the most sensitive places.

  After three weeks, when he told her that the painting was finished, she asked him to show it to her. Shyly and hesitantly, as if it was himself he was about to bare before her, he carefully removed the white cloth covering the canvas. Rosa stared speechlessly at her portrait.

  “Is that me?” she asked weakly when she recovered her voice.r />
  Shmuel laughed in relief. He knew that Rosa liked what she saw. “Yes, it’s you,” he whispered, as if revealing a secret to her.

  “Is that what I look like? Are you sure?” she asked again, and her heart beat as if it wanted to burst through the barrier of her gigantic bosom.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  The big woman looking at her was more beautiful than anything that Rosa could have imagined. She lay languidly on her side on a red silk sofa like a princess in a harem, her slanting blue eyes half shut and smiling. Her head was crowned with thick, shining curls, and her face was free of wrinkles and signs of age.

  The next day he arrived with a new canvas, and this time he demanded to examine her wardrobe. After rummaging briefly among her dresses he chose one with lace and ruffles, a shorter hem, and a lower neckline. When she sat in front of him in the dress he had chosen and the pose he had requested, with a big bowl of gleaming summer fruit next to her, he asked her to raise the hem a little, so that he could paint her legs from the ankles to the thighs. Rosa did as he asked. A month later she found herself gazing at the picture of a beautiful, fleshy gypsy—half sitting, half lying—with a darkly seductive look in her eyes.

  During the many hours of her sittings, she would look at his paint-spotted hands, and imagine them undressing her, stroking her body, and massaging her breasts. Full of anticipation she examined his mouth, sensing his lips pressing on hers and his tongue touching hers. When he bent over her to correct her pose she would examine the swelling in his trousers, look into his gray eyes, which softened under her gaze, and smell the turpentine and oil paint that seemed to be on his breath.

  Without understanding how it happened, she began exposing more and more of herself to his brushes, until she found herself one day lying on her side on the sofa, one hand on the backrest, the other supporting her right breast, her legs drawn slightly back, as naked as the day she was born.

  Her nudity seemed to make things difficult for him, and he would sit staring at her for a long time with his brush in his hand and a hesitant expression on his face, as if he couldn’t decide where to begin and how to proceed. For hours at a time she would lie still in the pose he requested and wait for him to begin, but he seemed dissatisfied. Every now and then he would shake off his paralysis, go up to her, push a stray curl off her forehead, alter the position of the hand supporting her breast, and measure her with admiring eyes.

  On the fifth day of the nude pose she had already lost hope, and she resigned herself to another day passing without a single brushstroke making its appearance on the bare canvas. She lay on the sofa, and Shmuel, as usual, got up to correct her pose. As if by mistake, his hand brushed against the soft, white flesh of her shoulder, and he withdrew it in alarm, as if from a burning coal. Resolutely Rosa seized hold of his hand and passed it over her shoulders. As if lacking a will of its own, the hand slid down her arm and hovered over her right breast. Her nipple pricked up in response, and without a thought for the pose they had labored over for days she held up both her arms, clasped them firmly around his neck, and pressed his lips to hers. Thrusting her tongue into his mouth she felt the smooth surface of his white teeth and tasted the flavor of his peppermint gum.

  After a moment that felt to her like eternity, Shmuel freed himself abruptly from her embrace, took a deep gulp of air, and dived for her lips again, nuzzling and nibbling hungrily at their smooth, slippery fleshiness. Rosa opened her mouth wide into the kiss, her tongue plunged into the depths of his mouth, examining the roughness of his palate, probing between his teeth, and flicking against the inside of his cheeks. He began wrestling with her inside the cavern of his mouth with his tongue coiling and tightening around hers, alternately crushing and caressing as it twisted and vibrated.

  Rosa knew that she would not be satisfied with his tongue. She wanted all his mouth, all his head, all his body, all of him. Generously she opened her mouth until her jaws hurt, and allowed him to win the battle. Like a victor his tongue lay heavily on hers, throbbing and salivating sweetly.

  A moment later they were writhing together on the floor. Tugging and tearing, Rosa ripped from his body the clothing that separated her from her pleasure. As she struggled with him she felt the pain of the void yawning in her body and crying out to be filled. And when he buried himself inside her, filling her with his love, with his flesh and his warmth, she sucked him into her, thrilling to the electric currents running through her body from top to toe. Once she was the penetrater and once the penetrated, once the hollow and once the protuberance, until she could no longer distinguish between what was his and what was hers and what she gave him and what he gave her and what she received from him and what he received from her. Together with him she climbed the steps of pleasure, step after step, higher and higher, until she reached the top and could no longer stop herself and plunged joyfully into the abyss yawning below.

  Lightly and airily she threw herself off the cliff together with her lover into the black hole sucking them deliciously in, and she heard herself pleading and shouting in a voice she didn’t recognize: “More, more, more!” A long time later she lay in her pose on the sofa with her body satiated, her nipples stiff with pleasure, her cheeks pink, and her chin grazed and scratched with the stubble of his beard. With sparks of light in her eyes she looked at Shmuel hastily pulling on his shorts and trousers, composing his features into their previous expression, and trying with trembling hands to paint her.

  After this she would wait for him in the mornings with her flesh melting in anticipation. As soon as he came in she would lead him to the sofa, take a few steps backwards, and with her eyes fixed on his she would slither out of her clothes, wriggling her butt around in imitation of the striptease she had seen the one time she went to Cinema Rosa. Completely naked she would stand before him, waiting in suspense for the touch of his bright hands on her body. And when his hands began to roam over her, she wanted to feel his body joined to hers, uniting with her and pulsing inside her. Then Shmuel would rapidly remove his trousers and shorts, always leaving his long-sleeved shirt on, and penetrate her with urgent force.

  When their bodies were satiated, she would lie down on the sofa in the familiar pose, her eyes smiling serenely, and wait for the first brushstrokes on the canvas to send thrills through her body. And when the painting was finished, and he unveiled it with a flourish, Rosa gazed at herself in growing astonishment. The body she knew so intimately was reflected with the accuracy of a mirror, every dimple in its place, every fine blue vein in the lacy network covering her great breasts captured on the canvas. Shmuel had reproduced the expression on her face, the light in her eyes, the smile on her lips, and the relaxed position of her hand. The precision of the details was so great that she could have sworn he had counted every hair on her head and groin.

  She confided in Rachelle that as soon as she saw the picture she became aware that Shmuel knew her intimately, both inside and out. He knew what her internal organs looked like, he had made friends with the heart beating under her gigantic bosom, breathed in the air exhaled by her lungs, was familiar with the road through her intestines traveled by the food she chewed, with the electric currents passing through her brain, and with the size and depth of her womb. And from that moment Rosa knew that she wanted to share her life with this man.

  “But you don’t know anything about him,” said Rachelle, who was suspicious by nature. “All you know about him is that he’s a painter. You don’t know who he is, where he was born, who his parents were, if he’s married or not, if he has any children, how old he is, where he lives, how much he earns. I’m surprised at you! He’s been painting you for so many months, and you’ve never asked him any of these questions. There’s something fishy here. He must be married. I simply can’t understand how a woman your age loses her head again and behaves like a silly young girl falling in love for the first time.”

  “So what should I do?” asked Rosa helplessly after hearing her friend list all these questions.<
br />
  “If you’re serious about him, ask him,” said Rachelle firmly.

  The next day Shmuel arrived with his huge shabby portfolio and, as if he had read her thoughts and overheard her conversation with Rachelle, announced that since they had become so close it was time for her to know everything about him. With an angry movement he overturned the portfolio and shook out its contents. Rosa looked in horror at the pictures spread out before her, painted on all kinds of rags and tatters and on notices printed in curly Gothic script. As soon as she took the pictures in, she knew for certain that not only had she seen them before, but even worse, that she herself was one of the figures in the terrible scenes etched in charcoal with harsh, cruel lines.

  Suddenly she felt a terrible, gnawing hunger, and the emaciated skull-like face of Mischa, who had occupied the kitchen in the villa in Old Katamon, pushed Shmuel’s face out of her field of vision. Mischa’s stories came back and echoed in her ears, stunning her and pulverizing her from within, consuming her flesh, and leaving her skin and bones, a walking skeleton. She was the woman in the picture, whose sacks of breasts hung on her body like a pair of pockets emptied of their contents, herded into the showers of death and then shoveled into the gaping mouth of the fiery furnace. She was the shriveled body from whose mouth a haggard man in striped pajamas was extracting gold teeth while her eyes stared through him with the baffled look of the dead. She saw the skeleton of her body walking naked, its feet leaving bloody prints on the thick blanket of snow while a tall, stout man in a black uniform whipped the exposed flesh hanging on her bones.

  “During the war, when I was a young boy, I worked in a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz,” he said in a soft voice that sounded in her ears like a sharp, jarring scream. “I was responsible for removing the bodies from the gas chambers and transferring them to crematorium number five. I was a child of twelve, but since I looked much older than my age, I said I was seventeen and got the job that saved my life. At the same time I started drawing like a lunatic. I drew on every scrap of paper or material that I could find. I drew the women I saw in the gas chambers and the crematoria, naked and emaciated; I drew sexless bodies and women’s skeletons. Since I had no paints, I made them from chicory coffee and a mixture of earth, leaves, and bark,” he said harshly. And when he felt her body shivering in his hands, he added with a grim smile: “Perhaps that’s why I like painting fat women now—beautiful, healthy women, just like you.”