Grossman David: Her Body Knows

She locked the door and, vaguely distressed, walked through the garden, which in the dark seemed neglected and amazingly wild. She could see Shaul waiting for her by the car, talking to himself as he nervously rocked on one crutch, never suspecting her little invasion. The streetlamp coated him with a velvety wax, and his entire being was focused on something unseen by her. Esti still thought he shouldn't be moved around in his condition, and could not imagine what was so pressing. He himself knew he should not go there, certainly not with her-what was she to him and how would he explain it to her and what story would he tell her? It was years since they'd exchanged more than a few polite, evasive words at family events. There was something about her that always unsteadied him slightly and he did not know what it was. Perhaps because she completely refused to acknowledge his status, his reputation, the professional admiration he commanded everywhere. She always seemed to be demanding a completely different type of proof from him, one that he was not at all capable of providing.

Shaul, she said softly, in a tone that had never existed between them, as if declaring an immediate and total truce. But he shook his head angrily. Off we go, he announced. Help me in.

And Elisheva still stands where he had left off briefly, her gaze enveloping the face of the man in the bed as she distractedly bites her lower lip. She used to have that fleeting, unconscious habit at the beginning, when Shaul had met her, but then she stopped biting her lip in anticipation of him. Motionless, she whispers, I love your face so much. He makes a face. Me? My frog face? She slowly approaches the bed with her wonderful walk, thighs whispering, sits on the edge of the bed and holds out her hand and runs it from shoulder to thumb along his quivering arm. Yes, that face, she says with a sudden sadness as her body crumples and flows next to him, still not touching him, and he grumbles that she's wearing too many clothes for his taste, and she closes her eyes and says, Not today, today we'll just lie here and slowly caress each other. He is disappointed-after all, he has already fantasized and pumped warm blood through his body and undressed and arranged himself in a flattering position. But he obeys her, as always; every one of her desires immediately becomes his too; even now, in his passion, he obeys her, astounded at his enchantment, and for some reason he greatly enjoys feeling weak and devoid of his own desires beside her. He closes his eyes and feels the thin stream of his will running out as hers flows in, sculpting a hidden soul in him, new and unknown, and he turns over lazily, because if they're only going to caress each other there's no need for him to maintain his careful pose. He exposes his bearish chest hair, but she turns her back to him, cuddling and pushing against his stomach, rounding her body into a question mark opposite the exclamation point of his flesh as it straightens and gropes behind her through her dress. She takes his large, warm hand and rubs it over her face with a slow, dreamy motion, over and over again, tightening her face into his palm, clinging, emptying her visage into his hand, and now he finally feels what Shaul had already noticed before him, long before him-that she is giving him something the likes of which they have not yet had, creating a new combination out of familiar body signs, and at once his soul fills with gratitude and joy, as does his body, of course. But Elisheva herself looks unhappy, her expression is tense and pained, and she buries herself in his palm with a kind of determined desperation, leaving a souvenir, as if her face were a farewell letter meant only for his hand. Sometimes she writes a long, curly line on his back with her wet tongue or with a finger she has moistened down there, and refuses to tell him what it says. Read it through your skin, she tells him. Now she holds his fingers with both hands and walks them fervently over the arc of her forehead, then on her translucent eyebrows and over a slender eyelid and down her long, shapely face, and from there briefly to her mouth, her wide mouth, and inside, and she bites down hard on his fingers. He restrains himself and does not even sigh: amazingly tolerant, he knows very well that she is testing him to see if he can withstand her, and she places two of his fingers on her bottom teeth and presses them against each of her fillings, presses and bites and shudders with an emotion he does not comprehend. She's dismantling her face, he thinks, she is presenting me with her fragmented face, and he burns with an indistinct apprehension, one of those vague fears she often arouses in him, which leave their residue on the inner walls of his body.

Shaul thinks perhaps he does not always completely understand her either, but he, in contrast, knows how to expand his palm at these moments to contain her entire face and all its conflicts, and with patience and wisdom he suppresses the frightened motions until she is silent, breathing warm air into his hand, and then, slowly, he begins to give her face back to her, restoring each feature to its proper place, redrawing its boundaries, smoothing it over and feeling her clenched body loosen and relax, and his heart fills- What happened to her? Where had she taken him without his comprehending? How is she able continually to surprise and excite him, as if a nervous wing fluttered constantly inside her? Even after all their years together, he still cannot understand how such a small wing can move all of him, rock and stir all two hundred pounds of him and melt away his cynical sobriety. Shaul thinks and swallows; he opens his eyes, which he had screwed shut as if to violently crush the drops of these scenes out of them, and now he lies drained.

Just another moment, not yet, it's hard to let go. Now Elisheva turns around and faces him, curling up to his chest, exhausted by what had shaken her a moment ago. Her eyes close and she almost falls asleep, but the man does not let her, he props himself up on his elbow and leans over her and demands to know what that was before, what had frightened her so much. She replies: I don't know, I suddenly got very scared. And he, somewhat critically: But of what? She, wearily: I really don't know. And he, almost hurt: Then why didn't you say anything? Why do you always turn inward like that without telling me how I can help? And she whispers, with a smile, that he knows exactly how to help, that no one in the world can help as well as he does, that she was simply incapable of speaking. You know, she says later, how sometimes when you're making love, you reach a state that you simply can't contain? When you just can't say anything more? Well, that's what happened to me now, but the grief … I don't know, something scared me suddenly, made me shrink away, I don't know. And the man nods in astonishment, believing that she doesn't know and that she cannot give a more detailed explanation now, and this too makes him love her even more, her inarticulateness at such moments. She rests her head on his chest again, light now. She has suffered and disconnected herself, and now she is purring with soft delight, Shaul thinks, and says to himself carefully, as if reciting: This is a pleasure I do not know, a pleasure awakened in her only when she is with him. There is a substance expressed into the heart only in the presence of one particular person and never in the presence of another, he thinks, and Elisheva's eyes are still closed as she breathes lightly. You remember I'm going away tomorrow, she mumbles into his chest, drugged by the sweetness.

Mmm … he confirms.

Silence.

Four days? He checks again. That's a long time.

To be alone, she daydreams. Four days all by myself.

Wouldn't you like me to come?

Her eyes open. He feels her eyelashes moving on his chest hairs and knows the look without seeing it.