Grossman David - Her Body Knows

The silence was insufferable, and Esti asked gingerly if he had ever asked Elisheva to stop seeing the man, but this wasn't the question she wanted to ask either, and a dull sourness filled her mouth. She thought to herself that she was already submerged in the viscous oil-the cholesterol of the soul, someone had once called it, a guy she knew long ago-and her body could tangibly sense the oil surrounding her heart, filling its chambers with thick, creeping layers.

And if I asked? Shaul sighed. Even if, let's say, I gave her some kind of ultimatum, would she stop loving him?

She turned around to face him almost completely; she wanted to see him, but not in the mirror, with his long face, elderly for his fifty-five years, the sad clown wrinkles around his mouth, the empty space, too large, between his nose and upper lip, and his unlovely skin, withered a little and translucent, which always seemed like a snakeskin ready to be shed, a kind of dry membrane that stored all his theoretical knowledge. She knew it would be a long time before she was able to truly comprehend, because that was the way she did things, slowly and in waves, the way her dead mother's face had suddenly emerged, years later, in an omelet burning in the frying pan, with her precise mouth that looked as if it were blowing her a kiss, the kiss she held back during her life. Or the way the humpbacked kid who had once molested her in the lot behind the bowling alley had come to apologize thirty-five years later, not in a dream but in a salad-Quasimodo showing through a crooked piece of red pepper. Even the children made fun of her sudden brooding disappearances- "space cadet," "flake," Shira would mock in her army-speak. "Es-theronaut," Eran wrote in a limerick for her birthday. How could she even comprehend that Elisheva had such a hidden, full life? And what was this vicious pang at the bottom of her stomach? It had been going on for so many years, ten years of this, a whole decade of love, of life without compromise, in absolute honesty and without hiding. How could Shaul live with it? she wondered again. How great his love for Elisheva must be. Suddenly, in the same swing and in mid-motion, she veered and thought maybe he was lying, simply lying, because it was so implausible to think of innocent, transparent Elisheva as someone capable of tolerating even for one day the burden of such complications, or as someone capable of causing any person- especially Shaul-such suffering. For a moment she oscillated between the possibilities, but then the scales were tipped because of his previous explanation, the way he'd said, "And if I asked, would she stop loving him?" with complete simplicity and wisdom she never imagined he possessed. He sometimes seemed so obtuse when it came to human beings. All his titles and the research he had published in physics and education, all the senior offices he had held at the university and now in the Ministry of Education, had never made an impression on her. I don't care if he has an education as broad as a peacock's tail, she would say bombastically to Micah when he tried to defend him, if that's how he treats you and your parents. While she relived that anger for a moment, even clung to it a little, Shaul sank his head between his shoulders and, completely swept up within himself, muttered, What can I do? After all, I have no ownership of her emotions. She's entitled to love whomever she wants, isn't she?

She moistened her dry lips and took a deep breath. From one moment to the next, his body seemed to be presenting her with a newer, wider space, as if until now she had not understood or known anything about Shaul, and now she had to re-create him from scratch. When had he found the time to learn these things? she wondered. Maybe he really did need to distance himself from everyone, from the family, she thought warmly, because he had something to protect and he could not under any condition let them see inside him. She knew only too well how his story would have been related by them had they found out, how it would have been chewed and shredded and digested and ruminated. With lucid clarity she saw the looks exchanged around the dinner table, the head shaking of Grandma Hava, her mother-in-law, with her small, suspicious, bitter face, and her look, a flash of blue that burned and classified and defined and sentenced at the speed of light-and with the force of a spell, Esti sometimes felt, if not of mutilation.

She was already alert and upset, knowing as always that it was all signs, all hints and clues left for solitary spies, and she wished the night would not be over too soon; this night was very important to her. She inhaled into a spot deep inside her that was a glowing ember, carefully covered with heaps of cold ashes, and felt it blushing and flaring into a tiny flame. She looked in the mirror and adjusted it so she could stare straight into his eyes and said, Tell me, Shaul.

He twittered in surprise. But how? he asked. How can I tell someone a thing like this? And he added that ultimately a person was always alone in this kind of affair.

You can, she said with odd confidence, and when she did, she remembered the self she used to be, the one with whom you really could do anything. And I want you to know, she added excitedly, that everything stays here, just between the two of us. No matter what happens, it has nothing to do with anything or anyone, only me and you and only here.

He stopped her: But wait a minute. He was embarrassed and surprised at her outpouring. I'm still trying to grasp that I'm even.

She leaned back and rested the back of her neck on the seat, and her head pulsated with thoughts of suddenly, suddenly.

They sat in silence for a long while, breathing deeply, not believing this was happening. Shaul said, Look, Esther, I think I'll try to sleep a little, I haven't slept a wink since yesterday morning. And Esti said, Of course, sleep. She was disappointed, but also a little moved by the way he said her name: he had always avoided saying it, and now, of course, he chose the one name no one had called her for years and which was more precious to her than any of her nicknames. She slowed down so they wouldn't arrive, and as she passed by an avenue of wispy trees, her eyes lingered on a large road sign pointing to Beersheba. Whenever she went near there, she felt a little girl darkening inside her, and he said, If I don't wake up by the time we get to Kiryat Gat, wake me. He laced his fingers together tightly and closed his eyes, and his head shifted from side to side, searching for an invisible point in space

And immediately Elisheva surfaces on the bare hills in front of him, running, stripped of almost all her clothes, floating again with an odd lightness, defiant, and that same large shadow dislodges itself from behind one of the rocks, and she immediately hears the quiet, brisk beating of the stampede of large legs, or senses the pursuer, picks up his pulse in the open pores of her skin and the shivers running through her body. How can she sense him like that? He's still so far away from her. But suddenly the whites of her eyes start to glow-who would have guessed she still had such bold luster? Why does it seem to him as if this running is a form of conversing between herself and the pursuer, as if they are conducting an entire complex conversation, in a language and grammar to which he is not privy, and which no one in the world apart from them can understand. That's it, she's no longer mine, he admits with quick acquiescence, almost excitement. She belongs to this chase now, to the hunter, to the laws of predator and prey. If only he could see the pursuer, finally see his face for once, but the pursuer is hidden from him, always. He can divine his presence only from Elisheva, from the way the hairs on her skin stand on end and her pupils widen, the terrifying size of his arms and the imprint of his bare feet in the earth, the long, fleshy thumbs. He can also guess how those thumbs must bend to grasp the rocks with a kind of natural wisdom, like the talons of a wild beast, and in front of his torn eyes Elisheva sheds all the wrappings of their shared life as she runs-twenty-five years shed away one by one, they linger in midair for a moment and drop, and now she is truly naked; the body of his wife is naked, at night, on the hillsides along an unfamiliar road, his wife's magnificent body moves in the dark of night with determination and a wildness he has never known in her. But she has no chance, he can clearly see. Her steps are too small and she's too heavy, that much is clear. She's lost, it's over, and her breasts burden her too, of course, jiggling, hitting her ribs with a thud, and here, now, this is it, this is the end: a shadow falls on her calves from behind, her fair skin, her soft flesh, her flesh which was once so contained within the palm of the house-Why did you go out? Why did you even go out? — and the shadow floats above her back, a very large head with frizzy hair is displayed on her back, and two bony, massive arms reach out in mid-stride toward her waist, and only now does she finally turn to face