Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

I think that’s OK, I said to Rafi, and we shook hands on it.

Orit was over the moon when I told her about the new option.

I’m not interested in what happens after these two years, and I don’t want to even think about it now, she said. But I’m dying, absolutely dying, to design a little house for us in the Arava, and to be with you every day. I’ll open up a small office for desert architecture, she continued excitedly, and we’ll bring up a little barefooted Yossi close to our parents. So let’s start right now, she said, pulling me onto the bed. A smile spread across her face, her eyes closed, and from deep inside came that melodious purr of contentment. Till then I hadn’t experienced such a blend of passion and serenity and thought that only the tortuous path that our lives had followed could have brought about such a fusion. Little did I know then about the ups and down that this voyage still had in store for us.

The plots extending the area of our village came at the expense of a few vegetable fields on its eastern side facing the Jordanian border and the mountains of Edom. The parcels of land closest to the village had already been sold and in the more peripheral areas only a few tracts were still for sale. Orit and I toured the area on a smoothed but as yet unpaved gravel path between two rows of houses. We stopped at the entrance to the very last plot, holding hands, our fingers tightly interlocked: the land overlooked a date plantation, the very same one in which I made love to her for the first time. Both of us looked towards the grove at the far end of the plantation, the spot to which Orit had led me way back then. In our mind’s eye we could see the two bicycles left leaning on an inner line of trees so as not to attract attention. I could see the young, slim girl, unloading the wicker basket attached to the front of the bicycle, taking a pinkish-blue woven blanket with which, until that day, she had probably been covering her youthful body, and spreading it on the ground. I was even able to visualize the look of surprise on my face, its almost clownish expression, when she also removed the bottle of wine from the basket.

‘Here’, we agreed with a broad smile and hugged each other. I embraced her tightly, she buried her face in my shoulder and I felt a slight wetness where her eyelids brushed against me. Here we’ll try going back fifteen years, to that moment when everything seemed so full of promise, when it seemed self-evident to both of us that our lives would forever revolve around the desert and the Arava, facing the mountains of Edom; a point in our lives when we couldn’t imagine the iniquities of Hong Kong and Seoul or the disappointments of Beijing.

I love you, Orit suddenly said, so quietly that it sounded as if I had only imagined it.

And I love you, so so much, I responded as a much younger man would, and felt rejuvenated. Again everything was ahead of us, again everything was possible.

The village secretary told me it was good that I was coming back because my father was ‘no longer the man he used to be’. He sees him coming to the secretariat at lunch time, bent and clutching his back after several hours on the tractor or picking vegetables. He’s perhaps not yet a pensioner, said the secretary, and the Thai workers do help him, but somebody else has to take control. Among his peers the sons are already in charge.

Our imminent return gave my parents a new lease of life. My father, who very much wanted me to carry on with his lifetime’s work, was revitalized, as was my mother, who was exhausted from years of working on the farm and was now employed by the regional council entering data into the computer from home. The move also breathed new life into Orit’s parents. They had been thinking of retiring from teaching and going back to their home in the centre of the country after her younger brother had come of age and moved to Tel Aviv. They now decided to extend the tenancy on their home in the Arava. Nobody said a word, but the shared hope and longing for a grandchild and son strongly united us all.

Orit plunged into the work of designing our home, investing the project with all her love and passion. In front of my very eyes, on the computer screen in our Jerusalem apartment, a small house in the Arava sprung to life.

We never talked about the way our lives would be when we had children but designing the house forced us to think about it. When the children finally come, we will extend the second floor, Orit said. In the first year I, in any case, want our baby to be really close to us, so that when he opens his eyes at night he will see us. And even afterwards, until we have more children and until he is at least seven or eight, he can be on his own upstairs, Orit decided, and I, of course, agreed.

I felt how I too was being sucked into this heightened sense of expectation. The understandable theoretical wish for a child had suddenly become an animated desire. A yearning. The hope that had returned to our lives made us believe that the power of our love would make conception possible.

Orit drew a three-dimensional computer sketch to which she was able to attach the separate annexes on the second floor, printed it out and showed it to both sets of parents with a running commentary about their future grandchildren’s rooms. My mother couldn’t restrain herself, burst into tears, and fled to her room, overwhelmed by it all. Orit’s parents, though unable to hide their tears, nodded in appreciation, highly impressed by their daughter’s enchanting design.

Orit’s plans incorporated bits of the Edom mountains, the date plantation, the Arava plains and its soil. Then, the real structure began to sprout on our plot.

I started my course for a second degree in the International Relations Department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I had no intention of specializing in the Far East–that pursuit had already taken me to places that were much too dark. By the time the house is finished, and we can move in, I thought to myself, this academic year will be over and I can complete the rest with a weekly trip to Jerusalem. While we waited for our new home Orit returned to the architect’s office that she had left.

As the pattern of our life changed so did our passion for each other. The smell of the other’s body is no longer intoxicating, the need to be close to it, to touch it, and breathe it at every possible moment, fades. But the lost desires of youth are replaced by something else, no less beautiful. The love of a body so known, whose every curve is familiar, sensing how Orit will respond to each touch, how she will move, what sounds she will make, has a magic all of its own. There is beauty in our simply sitting together, even at two computers that are close to each other; me with my course material, she with her drawings; our legs touching every now and then. Or stretching out a hand and my touching her gently, our eyes meeting, delivering a smile that needs no words and doesn’t even divert our attention.

The only thing that came between us was the tension of the elusive pregnancy when once a month it became clear that yet again it had failed to materialize. We had sex, loved, hoped–then days later Orit would go to the bathroom and almost immediately come out, her eyes full of tears. I’ve got my period she would say, her lips trembling.

After months of unproductive attempts, Orit decided that we could no longer postpone artificial insemination.

Only once during the first year of my studies did Rafi call on me.

I have no alternative and I don’t want to tell the head of the Mossad or the prime minister that I can’t do this one, he said to me. And it’s important, he added, completing his list of justifications before explaining the operation itself to me. I wasn’t asked if I was prepared to take on the task. There’s a Pakistani scientist, one of the pioneers of the nuclear program in his country, who is selling himself to radical Islamists. Until now the US has been able to verify that Pakistan had kept its nuclear secrets to itself. But this guy is a loose cannon. To cover his tracks and conceal what he’s up to even from his own government, he has his meetings in neutral countries. This time it’s going to be in the Gulf. We want to delete him from our list of targets.