Grossman David: Her Body Knows

Running on a white hillside, running fast, her movements sharp, cutting through the dark, her light pants torn at the hems-perhaps they had caught on a thorn. He almost yells in amazement at the sight of her there, but summons all his strength to keep quiet so the driver won't see her. Because now there is a man driving. At midnight the phone had rung and a voice had informed him that his wife was missing. Gone. No one knew where or why. The voice even had a vaguely accusatory tone, as if Shaul were to blame for her disappearance. He listened quietly. The man said they were sending someone to bring him. He didn't even ask where to. There must be a search party, he thought foggily. He reached a sleepy hand out to her side of the bed and found it vacant, and only then seemed to comprehend and sat up quickly. The man told him to get ready, then hung up, and he sat and stared. Since when do the police notify a family that someone is missing? Usually it's the other way around, isn't it? A moment later there was a knock at the door: a fat, thick man with smooth, short, dolphinlike hands. Like the hands of the man who installed the intercom that connects Elisheva's day-care center on the ground floor to his study. He followed him silently to a filthy, battered Subaru, not even a police car, and got into the backseat and huddled there without saying a word. That was how they drove south for a long time, until he suddenly saw her running on the hill opposite him, light, swallowed up in the darkness and then emerging a moment later on another hill, so quick, rushing with thin, brisk motions like a fingerling in a night ocean, and around her were dozens of eyes she did not notice-red, sparkling, lighting up as she passed them. Now her thin blouse catches on the branch of a low tree and is torn away, and she is left wearing his favorite white bra, from which she knows how to seductively remove a pure, warm breast for him, longing to be sucked by his mouth. Why doesn't she turn around and see him and be rescued? All she has to do is just look at him and he'll reach out and save her, but she doesn't, she must not want to, she wants to go on running-that much is clear-she doesn't even feel she needs to be saved from anything, she enjoys being alone, moving rapidly. Her legs move up and down, her face leans forward, her body suddenly so strong- who knew she had this kind of strength in her? Running almost naked, peeled away, soon the bra too, but she doesn't stop, doesn't tire, glimmers in the shadows that lurk around her as if the tips of her exposed nerves were producing electricity. She floats with incomprehensible ease, light of body, but also with a certain lightheadedness, and then, precisely at that moment, a new shadow, elongated, silently emerges from behind one of the rocks and a large, supple, alert body starts running after her.

Shaul let out a moan of amazement and shook his head: Not yet, there's still time, get out of here, get yourself out, quickly. He glanced at Esti and wondered if he'd made any suspicious sounds, but she was lost in her own thoughts as she drove, nodding at some reflection, and he thought distractedly that from here, from this angle, she definitely had an impressive face-not beautiful but strong, a hardworking face, which led him to notice a tiny, round earring he had not observed before, like the cheap jewelry a girl would wear, he thought vaguely, a girl playing by herself on the sidewalk; he went on staring at the glittering gold in her earlobe, drawn to it with a strange sense of emptying out, and slowly but surely he relaxed.

Then, for no reason, their conversation flowed with ease for a few moments. Shaul asked her about the kids. He said the names of Shira and Eran, and added Na'ama's name with a certain effort. He can't remember the twins' names, Esti thought, and she knew that five kids must be a sign of vulgarity for him, a kind of bad taste, like someone putting five spoonfuls of sugar in their coffee. But the thought that he couldn't remember the names of his brother's children also aroused a certain flutter of compassion toward him, and she decided to try to stop fighting him, at least for the duration of the journey, to stop constantly settling scores with him in her heart and being insulted by his alienation from the family. This night was already a lost cause anyway, she thought, might as well get some good out of it. So she answered his hesitant questions and expanded with stories about the kids, repeating their names over and over to help him connect the names with the children. She also threw in something of each child's personality, spending a little more time on her Ido, the smaller twin, perhaps because he sometimes reminded her of Shaul, although he looked nothing like him-he was the only one of them who had some of her coloring-but even so, in the fragility, the distance, the thread of dejected absentmindedness that lingered in him, which sometimes pinched her heart with a vague sense of guilt.

And she asked about Tom-she had always thought something bad might one day emerge from that boy-and Shaul told her about the math studies at the Sorbonne and the grants Tom was collecting there, sifting any hint of pride or satisfaction out of his voice. As he spoke, she could see Tom sitting in some gloomy library, his too large head weighing down on his thin neck, and she wanted to ask something but thought better of it.

And does Eran have a girlfriend already? Shaul inquired, and Esti, though she suspected he was just trying to distract her from Tom, or rushing so he could sink back into that stormy internal mumbling, was happy to talk about Eran's sweet young girl. She joked about how they had already set up a family room in the house, up in the attic, and how Micah was of course nervous about it, he thought seventeen was too early, but nowadays everyone starts everything early. Then she caught herself and said, Well, not everyone, of course, everyone has their own pace. Shaul nodded, touched by her understanding. He said he kept hoping it was only his lousy long-bachelorhood genes, and that eventually someone would move in on Tom too, the way Elisheva had on him. Esti smiled and said she had those genes too, in fact, and Shaul said, So what are you saying-that someone like Micah may end up moving in on him? And it was a joke, but it wasn't, because they both knew that Tom might have that in him too. Their eyes met in the mirror, which for a fleeting moment displayed possibilities, his and hers, and wishes and longings and complications that had long ago been covered with thick layers of life's dust, and Esti blinked first and looked away, sensing that in his current situation he was actually capable of seeing more, even seeing too much. She slid him a quick, misleading smile in the mirror, teeth shining, and Shaul again recalled the first time his brother had introduced her to him: It's been a long time, hasn't it? Twenty years, Esti noted, I was almost twenty-nine when we met. Shaul was amazed and said feebly that she had hardly changed, and she threw her head back and laughed from the bottom of her heart, knowing that he sincerely believed she had gone through all those years and all those kids without changing. He saw only general concepts, she once explained to Micah, only silhouettes. But now, with his gaze surrounding her, it seemed to her that he'd already completely given up the possibility of breaking through his shell and truly knowing anything outside himself. But your hair was braided then, wasn't it? he suddenly exclaimed, and she was touched that he remembered. My beautiful braid, she said, and slid her hand down her neck and shoulder. Shaul looked enchanted at the soft motion of her hand, and it was the same thing every time he remembered any concrete detail from the distant past: a strange sense of gratitude spread through him, melting, as if he had managed to acquire further evidence that might help him one day, in some future debate, when he would be required to prove that there had been moments of fertilization between him and life itself. Sure, he said, you had a long braid, kind of thick. He latched onto this memory and refused to let go, and Esti guessed what he was going through-she, who was unable to forget anything, who remembered every word anyone said to her, and gestures and voices and smells-and she drew him into the conversation and reminded him how nervous Micah had been at that first meeting, how afraid she was of Shaul's stern judgment; I felt as if he were presenting me to a Supreme Court judge. She suddenly turned serious: You know, your parents' house was a true refuge for me, an absolute salvation. She hesitated over whether she could even tell him that only when she got to his parents' house did she truly understand what a home and a family were, but Shaul was thinking of his mother's shout-and-whisper performance when it transpired that Micah was uncharacteristically determined to marry "that woman of his," and for a moment he wondered how Esti had in fact overcome his mother's deep, almost pagan, animosity. If he had not been embarrassed, he would have asked her what magic she had worked on her to make his mother so devoted to her now, and Esti smiled to herself and thought perhaps it was a good thing after all that she had agreed to take this trip.