Grossman David - Her Body Knows

"I don't understand how he isn't falling in love with you." Leora spits out the words like a pit and laughs clumsily and accusingly, but Nili also hears a surprising little sigh slip through the words, and for a moment she thinks Leora, in her indirect way, seems to be making some admission here, finally. But even that doesn't really make her happy now, she just thinks of how two minutes of conversation with her sister exhausts her more than a whole day of work. Then Leora suddenly flares up, hissing at her that she's playing with fire again, and that as usual she thinks there will be someone to clean up after her. She brings up some of her past sins, and Nili listens to the list, and quite a few of the items actually raise a little smile of pleasure on her face. But she is depressed by the thought that it's been three years now since the sweet little Trinidadian who worked at the building across the street; he wrote her lovely poetry in English with chalk on the scaffolding, and left her penniless on the beach at Rosh Hanikra. Since that time, her CV has included no significant transgressions that you could really dig your teeth into. But Leora persists, spitting out chains of words, and Nili guesses how her gaze is wandering now, without seeing, over the walls of her home, objects and furniture and housewares, and as she talks she seems to inhale the strengths of the day-to-day from them with a joyless longing. Nili knows how Leora looks at this moment too-just as she did when she used to have hysterics as a little girl, and later as an adolescent, when she suspected that Nili was seducing and stealing away the few boys that dated her. In an instant she would go berserk, turn into an ugly old lady, and Nili, eyes closed in fear, would walk into the storm of limbs and screams and spitting as into a burning house, and wrap her arms around her, and Leora would freeze in mid-diatribe, afraid, as if someone had woken her out of a hypnotic state. She would stand like that for a long time, lost.

Later that evening, he's in a great mood. Nili is confused; she thought he might not even come back, that she must have touched some open wound when she spoke of his body. But here he is, refusing to talk about what happened, taking large strides around the room, waving his arms widely, demanding that she teach him everything she knows. "Everything?" She smiles. "Yes, everything." She laughs, telling him, "My best students-listen to this carefully now-if after ten years of studying they begin to understand that they know almost nothing, then I'm a truly fortunate teacher. But you still want to know everything now, do you?" "Yes, yes," he enthuses, and she stops for a moment as a cold hand touches her, because perhaps he, in his strange rawness, feels that he doesn't have much time. But he seems so alive and blossoming to her now that she immediately erases her fear, and with a flood of pleasure she encounters within her that forgotten motion, where she tips the vase of her soul toward him.

"Come here," she orders cheerfully, and places a hand on his back and a hand on his chest, and shows him how to stand, how to bend over to pick something up off the floor. She hints at something about yin and yang, and gives practical little tips: which exercises for massaging the internal organs you can do while you brush your teeth in the morning, and how important it is to brush your tongue too, to clean the night's germs away-her modest treasure of knowledge- and in between she tells him carefully, so as not to scare him, about the sun nostril and the moon nostril, and about the two halves of the body, which are two separate and different entities. He listens with grave alertness and his lips repeat her words, reciting, swallowing. "And that thing you said yesterday, the chakras?" She points to each one of them and touches the tip of his head with its short buzz cut, amazingly soft. "From this chakra you can connect to the infinite cosmic," she says, and makes sure he's not pulling away yet-after all, Leora isn't the only one who makes a sour face when she starts flowing toward the universe, and Rotem just puts her hands over her ears and starts singing loudly. But he has the opposite reaction: every such idea excites him and stirs him, and awakens in her the desire to give him more, to empty her knowledge out into him.

How little time they have! In two or three days he'll disappear and she'll never see him again. But wait, why must that be? Why don't you ask him for his address? No, that can't be done. But why not? You can send him books and tapes about all sorts of things, not just yoga, give him some enrichment, put together a personal survival kit for his disaster areas. Stop, you fishwife, down! Why don't you find out his contact information from the front desk? At least so you'll have it just in case. Because no, she presses herself between two strong fingers, because something within him dissuades her, because she knows that the secret of their encounter is in its nonrecurrence. But more than anything, because perhaps it's best for him, perhaps she shouldn't burden him with everything she contains. She knows exactly what she's talking about, there's no need to go into detail, but for example, when she's here in the hotel, far away from the girls, she might ultimately be doing them some good. In other words, it's very possible that in her absence, yes, she is doing them more good than-take a deep breath-in other words.

"Should we take a break?" I ask hoarsely. I can't do it, I have to get some different air. Preferably smoke.

She is quiet. Her face is strained with pain.

When I can no longer bear the silence, I say, "To be honest, there were at least twenty times when I thought you'd stop me."

"Why?" Her voice comes from very far away.

Oh God, I think, what have I done? What have I written here and how deeply have I hurt her now? If I had children, I remind myself, maybe I would know how to behave in these situations. If I knew how to behave in these situations, I answer myself, great wit that I am, maybe I would have children. I attempt to refresh my voice after all, to find a warm tone that will not sound as if I had just killed her. "I thought you'd at least say what's going through your mind when you hear all these. these hallucinations of mine."

"Rotem," she says, as if in that word she has summed up the discussion.

I remain quiet. Any further questions would sound idiotic, would sound hungry, and there is no power in this world that could make me ask her about him and her. But for example, I think of her in my heart, for example, when I described the singe you feel in your brain every time you miss some fact, every time you expose your ignorance and stupidity, how is it that you don't ask me where I, your genius, your walking encyclopedia, the prodigy of your hometown, learned to describe that so precisely?

"I have to know, Nili," I finally blurt out. "It's enough. I have to hear now if anything I've been babbling here for the last two hours is even a little bit close to reality."

"But it is reality," she says slowly, with unexpected tenderness. Almost with compassion she says it. "It's exactly the reality I want to hear."

At 10 p.m., before they part, he suddenly remembers. "Listen," he says, and hesitantly takes two fifty-shekel bills out of his pocket, looking aside. "My dad said to give you this."

"I don't want money from you." But she lingers for a moment, sadly contemplating her nominal value as a woman to his father.

He pushes it into her hands. "Take it, you should."

"Why should I?"

"You know, for the yoga. for us. so we can go on."

And he explains to her, squirming and embarrassed. "He"-he usually refers to his father as just he -"doesn't understand this kind of thing."

"What kind of thing?"

"This. Doing something without money." And he giggles. "He has this saving, that there's no such thine as a free lunch."