Grossman David: Her Body Knows

They went on talking with the newfound playfulness of two people who have somehow managed to avoid an unpleasant confrontation, although Esti noticed that even when he was laughing with her and seemingly swept up in the memories of his parents' house, Shaul still held them both back from completely giving in to the sweetness of the small details, cautious not to let the conversation go beyond the small talk of two acquaintances who had once been, say, to summer camp together. Or to a concentration camp, Shaul thought, and Esti saw his long, tortured face in the mirror, and for a moment was unable to look away from it and from his lips, which moved constantly as if he were conducting another stormy conversation within himself, one that existed independently of the conversation with her. At once she was struck by a sense of sorrow, and she wondered whether he was truly close to anyone, whether there was anyone in the world who coincided with him on some parallel line.

Apart from Elisheva, of course, she later thought with some effort.

She reached out and rummaged quickly through the large handbag on the passenger seat, and offered Shaul the sandwiches she had made and wrapped before leaving; she also had fruit and vegetables and hard-boiled brown eggs, two vanilla puddings, and a wedge of Camembert in a little cooler, and a tin full of her famous sesame cookies. Shaul looked on in wonderment as she fumbled in the bag and produced one piece of food after another, while still driving in a perfectly straight line, and he remembered the instant of last night's accident and complained that he had no appetite. Esti used her teeth to unwrap a sandwich for herself and hesitated for a moment, knowing how she would feel when she chewed and the sound was magnified in her head, but she shrugged her shoulders and ate it anyway, with enjoyment, then picked out some black olives and drank coffee from a flask. Shaul inhaled the smells of the food and the coffee aroma, and although his appetite was aroused, he decided not to ask for anything, imposing a little fine on himself for not accepting when she had first offered. Esti wiped her lips and asked for the third or fourth time how he could even travel with such a new fracture, and he assured her the Tramadol was already kicking in, only the itching was driving him crazy, the ants, and he hissed that even the worst pain in the world would not be punishment enough for such a stupid accident. She asked again where exactly it had happened, and he said, I can hardly remember, I was driving, I was driving home, I ran into a sidewalk-she felt compelled to flick the radio on to disperse the burden of his lie.

They listened quietly to the nine o'clock news. At the end, to Shaul's astonishment, the newswoman adopted the amused tone of voice that always signifies trivial anecdotes or minor catastrophes befalling other nations to report on a senior police officer in Spain, a well-known and respected man: only after he had passed away this week had it been revealed that he had two families living in different suburbs of Madrid, who knew nothing of one another. He had two wives, the newswoman said cheerfully, and six children with each of them, and he had given them all the same names, in parallel. Oh! Esti laughed. Two identical sets-just imagine! Shaul said, Imagine what, and his voice was too quick, like a snakebite. Hesitating, she said, Imagine such a thing, and he said gloomily, That I can actually imagine. She said nothing for a moment, then asked cautiously, Is something wrong, Shaul? He looked up heavily and stared at her with torn eyes, and suddenly moaned with such pain that Esti slammed the brakes and drove onto the shoulder and stopped. Shaul mumbled, No, no, go on, it's only my leg. But she didn't move, she sat very erect and waited as Shaul lay there, shriveled. A familiar storm began to brew inside him, wails and bitter whinnies interwoven into a roar that sucked his insides and threatened to slam him against the wall, any wall-after all, there must be a wall at the edge-or the bottom of a pit. How unbearably pleasurable it will be when everything is uprooted right in front of her eyes, he bitterly mocked his own misfortune. In front of her eyes would be best, he rejoiced, and then the thing inside him was cut off and sealed, and he pulled his unfractured leg to his stomach and thought, That was it, that must be what was decreed.

At the office, he said after a while with a hollow voice, there's a similar story.

Similar to what? she asked.

Like that guy in Madrid, the police officer.

I'm not following, she said, someone who's also married to two wives?

Something like that, he said, more or less. One day he discovered that his wife. that she was seeing someone.

Well, okay, she said, that happens all the time. But some hidden womanly gauge had awakened in her and slowly began to flicker.

No, he explained, not just someone on the side, not the usual story either, you know. He wondered if she was one of those people who said "fuck" easily. There's something much more serious going on there. In fact-he smiled, and she heard the smile and its complicated process of production-it's been going on for years, to this day.

You hear that kind of thing all the time, she said, confused. There was a light, strange breeze in his voice, an oblivion creeping down her spine on soft paws.

Then it grew quiet. A long silence, full of whispers. A light rainfall enveloped them in a thick screen. Every so often a car or truck passed them by and the Volvo rocked. Esti dimmed the headlights and stared at the side of the road. She saw blown shrubs and an old road sign lying on its side. Two white plastic cups blew around in the breeze. Shaul was still trying to save himself, straining to think what would happen after this, what would happen tomorrow morning, what she would do with what he was telling her, whether he could ever show his face to the family again, and how she herself would look at him. He kept pulling himself up straight, but his body would collapse again, and he wanted to ask her to take him home now, before disaster could strike, but he couldn't articulate the words, he so needed her to keep driving. The end of the road was drawing him away from the semblance of his life, the way you blow a raw egg out through a tiny hole in its shell. He told himself that his catastrophe had already begun from the moment he asked someone to drive him there. How had he even had the audacity to ask someone to drive him? What had he been thinking when he called Micah? How had he thought to explain this journey to anyone? He knew that he had not been thinking at all, that he did not have the strength to postpone what was coming, that he was prey.

But the thing here, with this couple-don't ask. He laughed softly, and she knew that laugh of his, a sharp spurt of bitterness, self-deprecating, ominous. It's something that's been going on for eight, nine, maybe ten years.

And he didn't sense anything, the husband? she asked. Shaul said, The husband knows. In fact, it turns out he's known about it for a very long time. Right from the beginning, probably.

She shifted in her seat, felt she should say something just to break the silence that congealed after each of his sentences.

Yes, absolutely, he said, though Esti was sure she hadn't had time to ask anything. He acquiesces, the husband, but with them it's even more complicated.

Now she could actually feel the sharp, familiar fingernails being drawn out one after the other from a soft paw, and she was hypnotized by their movement, and asked weakly, What could be more complicated than that?

He didn't answer, and it seemed to her that in between sentences he was sinking into himself as if he had to search for an appropriate answer that would both reveal and conceal, in the correct proportion.