Grossman David - Her Body Knows

Elisheva stops looking through the records and steals a glowing sideways look at him, and her passion sparks against his-

But no, no, she laughs, fighting him off, I wanted to dance now-

Wait a minute, Shaul says to Esti with a choking voice, I'll go on in a second.

He covers himself with a thin blanket that Esti had found for him in the trunk, and turns his face to the back of the seat and closes his eyes and goes back to that place of his. She can feel his body heat rise as soon as he gets there, and she wonders what he finds there, how much further he can go, and thinks it might be better if she does not understand exactly what she is collaborating with tonight, and what Elisheva would think of her, and what she herself will think of herself in the morning. But just tonight, she begs, and knows she is prepared to keep on driving him indefinitely, soaking up the heat he projects at her like a furnace

He tries to straighten up, but his head drops forward, and it seems he no longer has any will of his own, and this means that his volition has been taken from him along with his voice. That must be the procedure here. So everything's all right, everything is going according to their plan, and if so, he must think of her in his heart. He just doesn't know exactly how they want him to describe her in his thoughts, in what situation; in other words, what do they need for their search? But he soon understands exactly what they want. Their desire floods into him with a strong torrent: they want her without clothes, of course-naked, you idiot. But he refuses, and with his last remaining strength and dignity he tries to fight them, and the more he resists, the more their pressure increases, and he is surrounded by misty exhalations and hoarse sighs of anger as they sense immediately that he is trying to evade them, and he begs, Why is this necessary? Really, what does her naked body have to do with the search? It seems to him that even that thought sends a feverish chill through them, and that their eyes are now burning at him like dull embers. He quickly tries to wrap her with clothes, to hide her from them with his arms outspread, but what chance does he have opposite such an intense surge? He rocks and is shoved and tries to flee, but the waves of their desire easily subdue him, sweep him away and invade him, and his body falters on the field in front of them with none of his own desire, and he is tossed-from-side-to-side Backwards-forwards His-arms-thrown And-his-feet-stomping And-he-starts-dancing And-dances-for-them The-dance-of-the-husband Telling-with-his-body Telling-with-his-flesh What Elisheva looks like He goes Elisheva And comes Elisheva And laughs Elisheva And blinks Elisheva And dances Elisheva And undresses Elisheva And lusts for Elisheva And Shaul Elisheva From soles to head Rounding curving More beautiful More delicate-

At once his arms drop to his sides and his body rocks some more, looking for the focal point of familiarity, which he has momentarily lost, and his eyes open again slowly, indulgently, with a loose straggling of the eyelashes. He believes something happened there while he was gone, but he doesn't have the strength to remember what it was. It was as if I were running here in front of them, he thinks, confused. As if someone were doing a dance. He rubs his hands together and looks at their foreign movement, the gesture of a cunning merchant offering a prized piece of merchandise to a customer, secretive and witty, and his tongue quickly licks his dry lips, and a thin circle of stolen, ashamed sweetness stirs within him, a small precise circle like a flower bed around the roots of his soul, and in complete surrender, like a eunuch fulfilling his duty at a harem, he undresses his wife for them.

Half an hour later, Elisheva gets out of bed again, slower and heavier, drenched with him. This time she makes sure to put something on-a T-shirt of his or a thin colorful dress that hangs in the closet-and slips her feet into his clumsy wool slippers, even though she keeps a pair of her own there, of course. Sometimes, when she's gone, Paul crouches next to the bed and holds one of her slippers in his hand-there is a special charm even in the way he holds her empty slipper, Shaul smiles to himself, and Esti leaves her train of thought for a moment and wonders where he is floating now-and he puts two fingers into the hollow of the slipper and twists them around to touch all its sides, then he lifts it to his face and inhales the smell of her foot, which is preserved in it, and imagines he is licking her toes and she is writhing with passion. He was the one who taught her how much pleasure is contained in one's toes, and that there is not a single limb in our body that has no longing for pleasure. And perhaps that is the reason, Shaul suddenly thinks, that I'm incapable of sleeping with her the way I used to at the beginning. Not just because of age and habitude, but because now each cell in her body is taut with the pleasure sensors he has revealed to her, and as soon as I touch her, they wake up and start looking for him. I feel them searching, he thought. That must also be why our sex has become rarer, and shorter. I don't make love to her anymore. You can't call it making love, certainly not like once. We had it so good once, before all this started. Over the last few years a silent arrangement has emerged between him and Elisheva. Shaul can't even remember when it began or how it became habit: they go to sleep as usual, with soft and concerned affection, read a little, say good night, and fall asleep. And in the middle of the night, at three or four, almost completely asleep, they press against each other with eyes shut, desperately twisting around each other, violently even, like two strangers meeting in a dream, plundering and being plundered in the dark. Hard and full of sharp passion, they moan and scratch and glisten with fresh sweat, and prey upon each other because of the foreignness, then disengage and fall into a heavy slumber. In the morning they do not say a word about it, perhaps only the flicker of a look of shame, as if they both see themselves there, two wolves fighting as they grunt and whine over which of them will grab the larger piece of pleasure, and there is always a little guilt at the corners of their eyes, as if it were not with each other that they had slept. Then come many more nights of nothing, and suddenly they are thrown against each other again in their sleep.

Meanwhile, Elisheva kneels-he had almost forgotten-by the record cabinet, leafing through his hundreds of albums, and now Shaul feels like seeing her in a long dress, homely but with a mischievous slit up to the knee, no higher-he always protects the varicose veins on her thighs from the other guy's look, as if they were one last secret, private and modest, between Shaul and her, and as if they also embodied the final chance that she would one day return and be only his, when she gets old, when she loses her beauty, when the other guy gets tired of her, if that is even possible. But all signs point to him loving her more and more as she gets older, as more wrinkles appear on her face and neck, and in truth, Shaul has long ago lost hope that Paul is a man who likes younger women. Perhaps he once was, but she changed him, that's clear. She showed him the forgiving tenderness of growing old together, the shared relinquishing of the body that used to be, Shaul thinks, and his throat burns and he stops and stares for a moment, freezing her as she crouches by the record cabinet

He stands across from her, and out of all the hundreds of men waiting with their mouths wide open and strands of saliva glistening between their lips, he alone can see her and feel the warmth of her body and the slight shudder that passes through her. Without looking at her closed eyes, he slowly unbuttons her blouse and unfastens her belt and clasps, and realizes that until he began to undress her, he had not known she was dressed like this, wearing unfamiliar clothes-lace and embroidery and paper-thin muslin, appetizing garments of seduction-and he assumes she brought her clothes from there, from her other home; she must have wanted to look charming and wonderful. He kneels at her feet as she holds out one foot as if in her sleep, her head held up slightly like a sunflower to the moon, lips barely spread, and he pulls off a soft, velvety boot to reveal a white lace stocking, which he slowly rolls down her long golden leg. The shiver in her body intensifies, becoming a shudder now-why is she shaking so badly? Perhaps from cold, or from shame, or perhaps the looks coming from so many eager men are arousing and flustering her? To present her at her best, he softly pushes to turn her a little and hide her sweet little paunch from them. Then he displays her fully naked body to them, with the disdain they deserve, but as his finger points, he unwittingly adds an inviting little twirl, and against his will, a strange kind of belching utterance escapes his mouth: She's not bad, eh? And some devil pushes him to add: Look at those lips! See how long those legs are! He notices the shock that runs through their bodies when he says it, and he gulps down a smile and glances at them. He sees their eyelids closed tightly and many nostrils moving in front of him in damp shadowy pairs. All of a sudden the fear lets go of him and in-