Grossman David - Her Body Knows

Maybe I'll just give her an abbreviated list of events, crashes, and wallowings; fortunately, I can't remember the details anymore anyway, only the names and the faces, and above all the various backs that were turned on me. And it's also true that sometimes I confuse what happened with what I invented around it later, in stories, in writing, but there's no doubt that I spent three or five years like that, being passed from hand to hand and broken up into small change. I scrubbed the bottom of the barrel really thoroughly, until one day I heard a voice next to me that said, "I think it's enough." And when I resisted and kicked and screamed, she said, "If you needed to prove something to someone, I think you've done that." And with complete serenity she added, "You've proven it so well, in fact, that you've almost refuted your own argument." And I barked, "Go away, get out of here, I'm incurable." She laughed and just hoisted me on her back like a sack, and carried me like a casualty through a few deserts, quietly absorbing the toxins I released, and explained to me the whole time that this was all because I was completely ignorant, I was like a child raised by wolves when it came to living together, living as a couple, and that it would gradually stop hurting me so badly, the kindness.

Then all of a sudden I give up. Regretting the harshness of my heart, I turn to her, extricating myself again from the twist I had unknowingly placed myself in. I put my papers aside and stretch out. Enough, I say to myself, and then to her too. "Enough already." She doesn't ask enough of what. I tell her about Melanie's dad's farm in Wales, with its green pastures where, as I told her family, "they maketh me lie down." And the creek that just runs innocently through the yard, and the sheep, which are the most sheeplike sheep in the world. I explain to her that when the cows sit down, it means it's go-

ing to rain, and if the sky is red like fire at dusk, that means it will rain, and if the sky is bright-it will also rain. From my purse I take out a stone I brought back from there; it is black and white and looks like half an apple, and in its center, like an open eye, is my birthstone. Melanie suggested I take it with me on the trip; I place it next to her on the nightstand. It warms my heart to say her name out loud. I'm less lonely when her name is in my mouth. I tell her how Melanie has already grown used to the way whenever she tells me something special, a story or a childhood memory, I pull out a pen and write it down. She even made up a saying: Telling secrets to a writer is like embracing a pickpocket.

Nili digests. Slowly and strenuously, the words pass through the cords that are gradually stopping up in her brain. But when she finally laughs, she laughs from the bottom of her heart, and a bright spark manages to burst through the haze of her eyes, and instead of being burned, I surprise myself by being flooded with happiness for them both.

She shows him the exercise they used to call "airplane" when she was a kid. She lies down on her back with her legs straight up in the air, and he puts his stomach on the soles of her feet and holds on to her hands. "Are you sure I can't fall like this?"

"Don't worry, I'm strong."

"But is this yoga too?"

"It's my yoga." She smiles, sparing him the whole speech. "Come on, get up."

And he does, surprising her with his lightness. His bones are so weightless, she thinks. But then he contorts his face in terrible pain and hisses through clenched teeth that his whole inside is tearing up from this.

"Do you want to come down?"

"No, not yet."

The soles of her feet can feel his stomach tightening against her.

He groans and his face looks twisted and flushed, but still he stays up there a moment longer, and then, when the pain is almost intolerable, he suddenly gasps a first breath, then another, and another, and giggles, surprised. He tries a few bolder breaths, broader and deeper, and she smiles, and he hovers and breathes above her face with his eyes closed, focused on himself, and his stomach becomes soft and starts to flow, cradled in her feet. She tries to feel what he has in there, what the story is with his stomach, but she is unable to. He glides above her, then lets his hands and head drop, and smiles to himself as in a dream. She looks at him and sighs softly to herself.

Once, in Dharamsala, in a little market where she sold potatoes and Reiki lessons, with baby Rotem tied to her back with a large shawl like the local women did, she first heard the story of how the Dalai Lama was chosen at the age of four, when he could point to the set of false teeth that had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama. There, in Dharamsala, very far from home and from the man who had informed her that if she left she'd have nowhere to come back to, she often thought about the wonder of being chosen. She told herself hopefully that it must have something to do with the ability to choose correctly from among the multitude of possibilities. She had long ago given up the hope of, for once in her life, making the truly correct choice, one that time and life would not eventually disprove and make subject to mockery in some way or another. And of course she had already given up the foolish and pretentious wish that she would herself be chosen for something. But as she grew older, she often liked to fantasize about the happiness of the Tibetan monks at the moment they made the correct choice: how they laughed and glowed at each other, and the relief they must have felt when they realized they had once again been redeemed from loneliness, from barrenness, from the fear of living in a world with no such child.

She breathes deeply, her feet spreading out in his stomach as in a pair of slippers, familiar guests. His arms float over her, their joints so thin and delicate. He is incredibly beautiful right now, permitting himself to loosen up, to forget, to mist over. And out of the relax-

ation a speck of saliva drops from his mouth onto her, and he stiffens up at once. His eyes open wide, she can actually hear the alarm sounding inside him, alerting him to a dangerous leakage, and he leaps off her and kneels at her side and quickly wipes her with his hands, just a tiny drop of saliva on her forehead, but Nili sees his expression as she lies there, dejected, and she feels a cold metallic touch.

Fifteen minutes later he is happy again. For the first time he is able to fold his legs into an almost perfect lotus position, and he bravely withstands the pain in his foot muscles as they stretch unbearably, then undoes his legs and lies on his back, slowly letting go of the pain. Suddenly-she doesn't know why, perhaps out of gratitude for having kept quiet about other things-he tells her that his greatest dream is that one day he'll own a restaurant. "A restaurant?" she repeats, astonished. Why a restaurant? What would he have to do with a restaurant? Yes, but first he has to study. Prepare himself. Next year he's already going to start waiting tables. "And what about school?" He waves his hand dismissively, he's planning on leaving the boarding school. They're a bunch of religious fanatics over there, and he doesn't even believe in God. "You don't believe in-" She straightens up and looks at him. "Then what are you doing there?!"

"He makes me go, but starting next year I'm only doing what I feel like."

"Wait, wait." She perks up, recognizing the edge of a thread, trying to undo the knot. "Explain to me why you don't believe in God."

But he has no interest whatsoever in conducting a theological debate. "There's this guy in the neighborhood, he used to work at Greenberg's, and he just opened a Chinese restaurant and he's willing to take me on for a trial period starting in April, and I'm already memorizing the menu and the dishes and the prices." He smiles sheepishly. "Wanna hear something funny? When you said yin and yang, at first I thought they were names of dishes."