Grossman David - Her Body Knows

Then, to dry off, she walks around her little room in the nude, reflected in the closet door mirror and the mirror on the wall. It is her little rebellion against Rotem, who follows her from room to room when she walks around at home like this, closing the blinds and drapes as she goes, with the fanaticism and indignation of a harem eunuch. Nili stops, sits down with a sigh, and dials home, and hears the forty-nine seconds of violent music which Rotem recorded on the answering machine and her hostile, barking voice: "Leave a message if you must, but between you and me, you're better off managing on your own." She tries to plan out what to say and how not to be annoying and not to make a mistake that would force her to drive home to Rishon immediately and get there to erase the message before it's played. She's so busy thinking and licking her lips that she doesn't notice the beep, and then she is propelled from inside and says with a tense, reprimanding voice, "Roti? Roti, honey? Are you there? Girls? It's me, Mom. I hope everything's okay at home, that you're getting along and having fun on your vacation …" The words sound like gravel to her. Lines out of a phrase book for tourists. She has a feel-

ing-no, she knows -that Rotem is there by the phone, listening to her with her mocking smile. She can see the mouth, slightly swollen with bitterness, peeking out between the curtains of long hair, lying in wait for her slightest slip, even a minor mistake in her Hebrew. The mouth of a supreme-court judge, Nili thinks, and her hand reaches out to smooth it over, to soften its tiny crevices and angles, and Rotem pulls back-God forbid she should touch her: there must be no contact between bodies. "Listen, sweeties, I have to run now, I have a ton of work here, but I'll call tomorrow and we'll talk, and on Friday I'll be home. It's only a few more days, easy as pie, and on Saturday we'll have a wild time." She finishes quickly, relieved, and puts on a new white cotton shirt, smooths both hands over her bust and stomach and legs, as if erasing the creases of her soul, ironing herself and being reborn. The two of them, he and she, get back to the yoga room at exactly the same time. They meet at the door twenty-five minutes before the time they had arranged, and she sees that he's changed into shorts and an orange T-shirt that dances in his charcoal eyes, and he's wearing flip-flops that expose long, graceful toes. Again the words "Egyptian prince" twinkle inside her. When she shuts the door behind them, she asks matter-of-factly why he wore long pants up till now in this heat.

He chuckles sharply and smoothly. "Because of my dad, it gets on his nerves."

They keep working, an hour-long class and a fifteen-minute break, and when evening falls, they go on without stopping, instead diving into a long relaxation after their prolonged effort, lying beside each other on their mats, looking at the ceiling, hazing over a little together.

"And don't you get tired out?" asks Leora, who calls again at eleven that night, worried after their first conversation.

"Tired out? But I'm recharging the whole time! I'm full of energy, I don't even think I'll be able to fall asleep tonight."

Leora, the sandbag of this hot-air balloon for the past forty-seven years, squints her eyes suspiciously. "Now concentrate," she says, as she employs the deft movements of a sidewalk cardsharp to fold the dozens of freshly laundered socks and underwear-Dovik's and Ofer's and Ronnie's and Shachar's-"and try to explain to me, without using any Sanskrit or any cauliflower, what his story is."

"That's the thing-I have no idea." Nili spreads her fingers out helplessly. "But he just knows, he knows his body from inside. How can I explain it to you? It's like his spirit can easily reach any part of him …" Her voice trails off. "Cauliflower" was the name Leora had given, years ago, to all of Nili's "spiritual dealings," and even Nili herself had become resigned to it, with a forced sense of self-derision. "And what's interesting, Lilush, is that the strengthening poses-all those push-ups and sit-ups and all that stuff that guys usually do like crazy and mess up their backs for the rest of their lives? All that's not for him, and the truth is that he's really weak for a boy of his age. He's a real weakling"- as if he's deliberately let his body atrophy, a strange, chilling thought enters her mind-"but he has such flexibility, such flow, it's amazing, a kind of rejoicing of the body. I rarely find such a thing even in people who have been doing yoga for ten years." (There's that voice, Leora thinks, and feels a stinging sensation all over, that veiled voice.) "But it's not just the body with him, see? It's from a completely different place with him, it's as if he"-and she stops, and through all the mountains that separate them she gives Leora a look that she can aim only at her sister, a look that seems not to have matured even a day since the age of seven, the stubborn and rebellious look of a little girl who had a hand placed over her mouth so she'd finally stop talking nonsense, but her eyes are very bright, shooting sparks of words. Then suddenly, in complete opposition to the rules of the dance, she stops herself, and with a cunning that she's very proud of, she sighs. "You know what, never mind. Maybe it really is all in my head. Tell me, Lilush, how are the kids?"

I glance sideways at her and see a smile. A full smile. The old Nili. And at once I become filled with pathetic and irreparable pride. It's unclear to me exactly what I'm proud of. Of the fact that she thinks I've finally written a good piece? About inserting a little revenge against Leora on her behalf? I don't know. I only know that it's not really my pride, it's her pride in me, which is almost the real thing, and I quickly bury my secondhand pride deep down, as deep as possible, with the other emergency supplies I've never used. The shelves there are laden with sealed jars full of preserved pride (and joy, and enthusiasm, and the purpose of life, and various other delicacies), and she mustn't know of them, and I mustn't either. Maybe one day, I don't know, maybe after, or when it's easier. Meaning never.

With closed eyes, she immediately responds to my molecular changes. "What can I say, I never thought I'd have a writer daughter."

There is tenderness in her voice, and I am quick to pounce on her. Don't be a bitch, I command myself, let her have her moment of pride. But there is provincial, illiterate satisfaction in her voice. It seems to be rising and arching toward me, and a large fleshy tongue pokes around inside me, searching for a crack. And the flames of age fifteen, the grumble in my stomach that calls out immediately: Stop her now! It doesn't matter what she wants, stop whatever you can! Annihilate the greasy waves of high tide and longing with a look or a comment or a scornful silence! For a long moment I actually fight myself, using both hands to secure my soul as it arches and trembles in reaction to that voice, to the price it exacts, even during phone calls to London-yes, that far away-when in mid-sentence she would stop, focus inward, and apparently incapable of restraining herself, she would emerge with the pronouncement, like some gullible prophet, with that hearty, fluttering voice: "Sweetie pie, you're getting your period soon." I would lose my temper, scream at her to stop pushing her way into my soul and get the hell out of my womb, and besides, it's not even my day-and of course, an hour later, like clockwork.

"You know," I say to my complete surprise-and it's clear to me that what I courageously sealed off in one place has immediately started leaking from another-"you never said anything to me about that book of mine that came out, the one I wrote, the Troubled Tourist one."

She doesn't answer. I decide to leave it and move on. But what about the cigarettes, I ask myself, how do I get through this night without a cigarette? "I asked you to read it," I remind her, knowing exactly how I sound.