Grossman David - Her Body Knows

There was a contradiction, she felt. There were facts that grated on one another. And in the days that followed she did not stop thinking of how she had wanted to be pulled after him into the story, and that was probably why she did not ask him how the two could be reconciled, Elisheva's explicit desire to be alone and his rushing toward her. Shaul opened his murky red eyes and seemed immediately to sense the doubt that had resurfaced in her, and he mumbled that it was something between himself and Elisheva. She asked if Elisheva knew about his visit, and he said no, and she cautiously remarked that Elisheva might be scared to death by his arrival in the middle of the night. He scratched around the edge of his cast and said very slowly, Please don't put pressure on me. Then he spat out, Well, it's really getting ridiculous that you don't even know where we're going. But at that very moment she almost interrupted him to ask him not to tell her yet, so she could keep going like this a little, driving with no borders and no purpose. He said, Have you heard of a place called Orcha, near the Ramon Crater? She breathed deeply, bade farewell to sweet ignorance, and told him she used to dream of going there alone to spend a few days in a cabin, to cleanse herself of all human contact. She always comes up with these godforsaken places, he said, and in his voice she heard something that reminded her that he was, after all, a Kraus-a vengeful tone, petty and calculating, and she thought of Elisheva, who was now in her own cabin in the heart of the desert, far and isolated from the other cabins, and she became concerned again. What would happen when he went into her cabin? What might he find there? And what was he intending to do? Shaul seemed unable to resist her thoughts, and immediately shrank and turned his face away like an escapee and moaned into the upholstery. Tell me, she said quickly, before he slipped away from her again. What is there to tell? he sighed. Tell me. Tell you what? About them, she ventured, surprised by the force that pushed her toward him unhindered. He must have sensed the slight tremor in her voice, and the tremor was familiar to him, because he smiled at it wearily and unhappily, the smile of a man who is lost, impure, who has corrupted a child.

Their most beautiful moments are when they are both calm, he thinks. His heart twinges and he longs to portray them for her as they are during those times, in all their beauty, to describe them in such a way that she will not be able to resist them-because they are irresistible, he repeats to himself-but how can he tell her?

During those moments of calm, he knows, they can imagine that they have time, that they do not have to give in at once to their urge, that urge which is so human and so understandable, he thinks with pursed lips, the urge to throw their bodies against and inside one another, to dig and burrow into each other, breathlessly rising and falling as they have done almost every day for ten years, with desperate dizziness, needing to squeeze every last drop out of their precious moments of closeness, every cell in their bodies an open mouth to kiss and suck and lick and bite.

He shuts his eyes, and as if he were pulling a book from a crowded shelf, he chooses one such day, when they are completely at ease. He holds the day in his hands and opens it up. He thinks of them relaxed, demilitarized. They are so different when they have time, when they're not tense and disappointed before they've even begun, because they know they'll have to rush. Their movements are different, their breaths, even their expressions. How can he tell her? How can he sneak across the border to the outside?

His hand lies softly on her bare stomach. For Shaul, this stomach represents the furnace of her femininity; he has no idea what it means to the other man. He sees the hand, the fingers, the ring, the stomach. He needs the picture to be slow and precise. And he wants to see it through Elisheva's eyes, from within her and using her words. "Lingering," for example, is a word of hers that fits here. She once knew how to linger, she often laments. She had great patience and the stillness to observe. Then she too became loaded with burdens and nuisances, and now she is like Shaul, like everyone, scampering around, constantly robbed. But when she is there, everything within her relaxes and protracts. Time-those fifty-something minutes- unfolds more and more hidden creases, the very same time which then freezes in Shaul's veins.

And you have to see where each and every finger is positioned, he thinks, the way his thick little finger rests on the evasive line between her hip and her thigh. Another brushes over her hairline. Touching this place always arouses her, and he too, her man, must know this, although of course he may use a completely different touch to arouse her, in places no other man could even imagine, and with acts no other man has dared commit even though the desire is great. Such a man might like, for example, to traverse her entire body with little kisses down to the soles of her feet, to wrap his lips around her plump white toes, one after the other, very slowly, sealing his lips over each of them and sucking gently but persistently, then to run his tongue around each toe, biting it lightly and sensing its feathery down bristle, things Shaul has been passionately longing to do for years but has never dared, because it is not for him-it is for her and her man, and deep in his heart he knows that it is far more appropriate for them than for himself and her. He no longer asks himself why this is or when it was decreed-there would be no point in pursuing that question. That is simply how things were decided in some distant place, in that way in which delicate matters such as these are normally determined and sealed: a man simply knows what belongs to him and what does not, and the act of slowly licking and sucking her toes does not belong to him, period. Much like the journey in the opposite direction, during which he might have sharply but gently bitten her ankles, still beautiful and refined, then ascended with those same nibbles up to her calves, where he could have made circles with his tongue around the pinkish dimples behind her knees. But he prefers not to think of that now, not today, because today they are relaxed, she and her man, completely still but for that one finger of his that traces light circles on her quivering skin. It's the finger with the silver ring she bought him on the fifth anniversary of their love. She bought two identical ones, and she wears hers only there, in the apartment. How can he tell her?

Esti looks for him in the mirror but does not find him, and for a moment she is alone in the car, in another time, and for a moment there is a strange silence and there is tranquillity, and a hidden door that opens just a crack. She takes a bottle of water from her bag and twists the cap off with her teeth, and then his voice comes from behind her again. He is here. Mumbling to himself with his bowed head rocking a little. But she doesn't listen. She gently disconnects from him as she would unravel her fingers from those of a sleeping child. Delicate feelers stir within her: her refugee senses pick up warmth, the scent of a beloved body, a deep, scorched voice, and loud heartbeats that she can still hear sometimes, even after twenty years, even in a crowded street, like a faraway drumming, and she starts to fervently search around herself, barely able to stop herself from calling out the name.

His finger now hovers over her sunken navel, Shaul can see, and his fleshy thumb sinks lightly into the soft pillow of her stomach. These delicate touches awaken whispers and currents above and beneath her skin, and she contains their motion within her as she lies still, her eyes closed and her pupils clinging to her translucent eyelids. He has only to simply flutter his finger from her navel down to her hairline, barely touching, for the fire to instantly consume her, and perhaps this is what he will do, because deep inside he has not yet completely accepted her desire to lie absolutely quietly beside each other today. Just be together, Elisheva says without opening her eyes. Just recharge, she mumbles, picturing an intravenous drip of quietude and solace-"solace" is such a lovely word for her, Shaul thinks-for both of them, he revises. How blissful for us to find fulfillment together in the power of mere closeness, in merely knowing that I am lying beside him, that my body is satiated-not from the satisfaction of passion, but simply from the sweetness of knowing that he is with me quietly, leisurely, belonging, in this pleasure that gushes up from the heart and boils over and spills onto the sheets, requiring almost no touch, no bodily division, with the silent knowledge that we are a mature man and woman, full of love.