Grossman David - Her Body Knows

She shook herself abruptly before she could get carried away, and straightened up and coughed loudly and yawned exaggeratedly, but her body sank back again and delved softly into the seat, and she knew she had been there for many long moments, stripped of any determined decision and flooded with passion and longing and love. Sometimes she would even avoid thinking of him because of a vague sense that he became more and more absent with every thought, and besides, she decided she had no right to go back there out of the exile she had imposed on herself years ago, not even as a nostalgic tourist. But now it seemed that tentacles were being sent out from there to gather her in, and she no longer had the strength to resist. She dove into a whirlwind of smells and touches and wetness and fragments of pictures, the memory of the dreams that troubled her nights, and the new islands she discovered in her body, which had remained desolate ever since that time-

Shaul? she mumbled softly, as if asking him to come and draw her out of there. But he was gone

And he draws back, wanting to shout, to wake them up from the hypnotic and bothersome concentration with which they dig inside him, and he feels them sucking, or consuming something from him- but what? What are they sucking out of him without his knowledge, without his volition, completely against his will? As they burrow, he wakes to feel a vague fluttering deep inside, the flicker of the thing they are searching for within him, which moves inside him and tries to evade them like a smooth purse of skin, placental, damp, and en-

gorged with shame. Their large fingers chase it through him, and he wants to scream, to uproot them from the violent silence and from what they are doing to him, from what they are humiliating and desecrating in him, and a moment before he suffocates, he manages to take control of the wave of alarm-panic will not help them find her, and he clears his throat and says in a choked but extremely civilized voice, Good evening, my name is-

A raucous choir of shouts of protest and barks of anger storms him, and a few men put their hands over their ears, and it occurs to him that now, at this stage of the search, he is forbidden to say his name. Apparently he must remain only "the husband." And Elisheva? He wonders to himself and does not dare to articulate, Am I allowed to say her name here? But the look coming from their eyes slams him with the answer, and a strange weakness spreads through his legs as he looks with terror from one man to the next and his lips begin to quiver. Who are you? he asks with no voice. Why have you come?

They do not bother to answer. Only a soft, wavy ripple flows back and forth between him and them. A few of them stand with their eyes closed, heads held back, their nostrils open at him, shamelessly inhaling him into themselves from head to toe, studying him, following him, looting. He straightens up with considerable effort and stands with his chest puffed out, although his knees threaten to fold in on themselves, and then he feels the belly of the earth growling. A very quiet, dull growl, and a humming tremble rises from the soles of his feet.

It's them, he thinks, horrified. It's the men. He listens with his body and distractedly presses his feet together, but to no avail-the tremble is already inside him and seems to be massaging his nerve centers and the mortar and pestle of every joint, and he does not resist it. How could one resist it? Every moment another of them adds his voice to the choir. At first the new voice sounds clear, slightly higher than the others, then it threads in with the rest, dives into them and thickens them, and he has to actually stop himself from adding his own voice in a quiet hum, but something in him guesses that his voice would not be welcomed.

The growl slowly dies down until finally a heavy silence descends all the way to the back rows. Then they stretch their arms up, stomp their feet a little, roll their heads around to loosen their necks. Undoubtedly, a certain stage has now concluded, and he breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe now they will begin searching in earnest.

A hand is raised somewhere in the back rows. A faceless voice asks him to describe her, the wife.

Where to begin? How do you describe a woman you've been living with for twenty-five years? It's a little like describing yourself, he thinks, like describing one of your internal organs, suddenly exposed. He clears his throat again and says she is fifty years old, even though she's forty-nine-he doesn't want to waste their time with nuances- but then he discovers that not a single sound is coming from his mouth. He has no voice.

He is gripped by terror. He tries to say something, tries to yell, but his vocal cords are unheard, and he is struck by the thought that perhaps with that continuous growl they had not only directed their voices together but had also taken his, as one confiscates the weapons of a treacherous soldier. I can't talk, he realizes with surrender, trying to rapidly assimilate all the novelties, to adapt himself precisely to what they need in order to find her. He is not allowed to talk and he is incapable of talking. Only thoughts are permitted here, and that's fine. But maybe not even thoughts-maybe only these currents which surge through the blood like bolts of lightning. He looks far beyond them and feels his desire and his life force running out of him, and that's it, he can no longer go on resisting, and with no remaining strength he finally gives himself over to the constitution that rules here, the constitution of the search, delivering himself into the hands of its emissaries, who have gathered here for the express purpose of leading him step by step and denying him any possibility of an appeal, so that he will perform, in the best possible way, the role he has always been destined for in this comedy

Sometimes, Shaul whispers, rousing Esti from her thoughts, sometimes-listen to this-in the middle of a hug, she says to him, Let's dance. And then he opens one eye, Paul, and laughs- Right now? But she's already up off the bed and hurrying to the record cabinet. Naked, Shaul adds silently, and sinks into a heavy, swampy meditation, then extracts himself and continues. She bought him a new stereo system, but he won't give up the records and phonograph he brought with him from Riga. And she likes that too, he explained, the way she likes the rotary phone he insists on keeping ("That way I can enjoy it for longer when I dial your number," he explains), and his heavy typewriter with the ink ribbons, his old pair of moccasins, the white undershirts and white underwear, and the shaving brush that Esti already knows about, and the old plaid shirts and his funny horn-rimmed glasses and the thick wool coat and the bookshelves piled high and the piles of books from floor to ceiling, and the cheap kitchenware he stubbornly refuses to replace. Although, he notes, they do have one set of fancy dishes, painted with a fruit motif, that Elisheva bought for their festive meals-

Shaul can see it: She leans over to browse through the albums. Paul straightens up in bed and looks at her as she bends over. She still doesn't sense it. She will in a minute.

He says nothing for a long time, and his eyelashes tremble with uncontrollable pain. Within the pod of pain, diving into eternity, floating alone in the empty depths, without relief-

He almost gets out of bed and walks over to her. Shaul sees it, and his blood, like the man's blood, screams for him to get up and go over and take hold of her from behind and grasp and spread and touch and wet and penetrate with massive force-and for one long moment he manages not to go, not to hold her-how does he manage? What incredible powers of restraint and self-control he must have. Elisheva, without looking, now feels his fervor, a huge furnace with swollen purple tendons, and Esti feels it too, even immersed in herself as she is, enraptured. It's been years since she has allowed herself this much. She remembers how almost everything used to be a sign, a secret private sign: colorful plastic bags blowing in the wind and catching on the branches of a tree opposite her house and filling up with rain at night so they looked like large tears hanging. Or a small item on the news about a stalactite in Absalom's Cave that had dripped into a stalagmite for thousands of years until finally they united. The world was incredibly garrulous.