Grossman David - Her Body Knows

Quiet in the car now. Shaul is in his circles, and she is distant, swiftly borne across great expanses, full of momentum, carrying Shaul like a burning torch above her head, stealing a few sparks of fire for herself from the hidden parts of their trail.

She thinks with surprise of how complete she was with him during those years, the first ones, so much so that she thoroughly loved his family too, and stealthily crept into it from outside, with self-effacement and childish excitement. And he, in his way, talked with her about everything, and shared with her everything he thought would not be too painful for her, even though she was gladly willing to pay the pain levy, which was sometimes unbearable, only so that he would not for a moment stop the flow of his talk with her, so he would not filter or protect her or think twice. With thirsty shyness and the gratitude of an illiterate, she learned from him the meaning of home and family, parents and children, and the wonderfully complex relationships between siblings. She adopted them all without their knowledge, and lived their eating disorders and their little illnesses and their parent-teacher meetings and their jazz classes and their nightmares, and clung to their minutiae with an enthusiasm that he might have found touching, but perhaps also embarrassing. She was certain back then, her bitter heart told her, that this was the greatest closeness to a family she would ever achieve, and during those years there was even some relief in that knowledge, and a feeling that it was precisely the right place for her. And when sometimes the light in the window went out and she was left in the dark, she also believed that it was what she deserved. Her eyes are almost closed to the road, her heart flinches to think of the girl she used to be, a kitten, not much older than Shira.

Because she and I always used simple language, he went on with a voice full of knots. We spoke without witticisms and euphemisms, and that's what she loved in me, once. Once, my scientific talk was fine for her. That's what she called it: functional language, rational, the language of human beings. And I always thought this language of ours was enough for her, and it was how we made Tom, and set up a decent home, and lived together, and you could even say we developed and grew together, she in her field and I in mine. But apparently she needed another language, he mumbled, and withdrew into himself again, and Esti watched briefly and thought about Elisheva's "field," and how surprised she had been when Elisheva had decided, years ago, to get up and leave her wonderful job at the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and open a little day-care center in their backyard. How could Shaul agree to this? she had wondered then. How would he tolerate a day-care center right under his office window?

Perhaps they even have a different language between them, a third one. Shaul revived himself and Esti didn't answer. Something almost became clear to her, then fogged over again, a scene she had once seen: Elisheva at the day care, tired and gray-faced, surrounded on all sides by toddlers who clung to her happily and noisily, and above her, behind the window, Shaul's shadow.

It suddenly makes sense to me, he whispered with wonder. I can't believe I didn't think of it at the time: three years ago she got a bee in her bonnet and signed up for that Portuguese class, which was completely unnecessary-what use would Portuguese be for her in day care? Esti glanced and saw his face light up for an instant, viciously focused, as if he were a collector who had discovered a rare butterfly and was chasing it so he could pin it to one of his boards. Maybe they both decided to learn a language that would be theirs? Do you see? A language that would be clean of me, so they could listen to their fado together. Because that man, he hissed, has all the time in the world to spare. Twenty-three hours a day he does nothing but wait for her. I have no idea how he lives, what he lives on, who fi-

nances him, and if you ask me, the only thing he does all day is wait for her, prepare himself for her, fill himself up for her.

A swift, soulful impression passed through both travelers at once, of a creature-person who is nothing but a long tube of skin, pale and swollen, sprawled like a blind ant-king in the thick of the earth, in dank dimness, fed with the richest of foods; every day he discharges one white, round egg, and that is the course of his life and he cannot live without it. But Shaul was thinking of Elisheva's man, and Esti was thinking of Shaul, and she almost choked as she imagined the damp burrows. She practically shouted, Let's go back, Shaul! What do you need this for? It will only torture you even more to be there. But he said, No, no, I told you, she's not with him there, I'm almost certain she's without him. Esti was confused. Without him? Why would she be without him, when that's where they could.

Shaul took a deep breath and patiently explained again that Elisheva wanted to be there alone, had to be there alone. Without me and without him. She just wants quiet from both of us. He chuckled. But to tell you the truth, he later spat out, maybe she has someone there too, a third guy-who knows? Maybe he's the reason she insists on this trip. He closed his eyes as if he had just made a huge effort, and then apparently fell asleep. Every so often his head would fall forward and his body would shake, but still he continued to sleep as if he had to store up strength for the final and most difficult part of the journey.

She remembered how, during their first years together, he was happy with her like a child, and she was as happy as she knew how to be. Still, she was careful not to take too much, not to overdose. He was completely unable to understand why she held herself back, and she explained that she would gradually become more daring, but in the meantime he had to watch her like you watch a hungry survivor who mustn't be allowed to eat too much at first. You love me more than I'm capable of loving myself, she warned him. Even now, in the car, her fingers felt the touch of his small, pointed head, which she had held then between her hands. She had not known how to tell him that his loving whispers were always in her ears, like a story she'd been told, the story of a thing she did not deserve. But he understood. He called those thoughts "the baby teeth of a snake," and swore he would rip them out of her, and pledged to prove to her that the opposite was true. And he didn't even have to explain to her what he meant by "the opposite"; she knew it was the opposite of her.

Once in a while, he whispered, tugging a loose end out of his dream and threading it into the conversation, she surprises him by asking him to turn the TV on. Is there something special on? And she says, No, I just want us to be like this, the two of us sitting together on the couch, cuddling up, as if, as if. And when she says "as if," her voice cracks and she bursts into tears, and when she comes home she has to hide those tears and the puffy eyes, or at least excuse them-"Don't ask, they put loads of chlorine in the water today"- and the thought of having to do that humiliates her even more. As if, as if. she sobs. As if everything, as if we, as if happiness. And Paul says nothing, because there's nothing he can say. It's her decision to go on like this, in this duplicity, for years, without telling Shaul, so his innocent faith in her will not be damaged. Paul hugs her for a long time, fighting off the urges that the closeness of her body arouses in him. Then he gets up, Shaul said, and with a movement that is difficult to believe in a bear like him-but apparently there are many things you wouldn't believe about him, things that have enabled him to thrash me with such elegance for ten years at least. Where was I? And Esti, who could not follow the fragments of his thoughts, suddenly knew what he reminded her of: the scorpions in Beersheba, which the neighborhood children used to surround with a circle of burning rope, and they would make the circle smaller and smaller until the scorpion aimed its tail at its own head and stung itself. Then he gets up, Shaul recalled, and gets her up too, and with his hand on her back they go for a walk in the apartment, he and she; it's a sad little joke they play sometimes. Let's go for a little walk, he says to her on days when he too is suffocating, and they walk the seven or eight steps down the hallway, arm in arm, then into his messy study, flooded with papers and piles of books-he whispered with the voice of someone trying to seduce, though it was mostly himself, and Esti wondered how he could be both the scorpion and the burner and the circle of fire-and then they turn around and go back into the hallway, three, four, six steps, trying not to trample all the stuff that's scattered there-it's an indescribable mess, Shaul noted disapprovingly, with clothes and books and newspapers and rags just lying everywhere; I can't understand how they live like that, how she, in that jungle-and continue to the bedroom, and turn around in front of their huge bed and go back to the hallway, and his hand is on her the whole time, and her hand is on his waist, and they walk very slowly. They're like a couple of elderly teenagers, Shaul thought, and Esti could sense with her whole being how Elisheva and Paul listened together to a sound that only they could hear, and that if they stopped hearing it they would become a joke even to themselves. Shaul closed his eyes and accompanied them to the kitchen, where they circle the table to gain another two or three steps, and Paul, said Shaul, leans over and whispers in her ear, You see, Sheva- that's what he calls her-don't say I never take you out, and Elisheva smiles, and her chin quivers slightly.