Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

Yes, I do. That’s why I don’t leave now. I’ve headed for the balcony enough times. I’ve convinced myself enough times that there was no point in getting attached because, in the end, you break up. When I was twelve and we were supposed to fly to Detroit for a sabbatical year, I pressed up against a column in the queue at the airport and said I wouldn’t get on the plane. But in the end, my father seduced me into going by buying me a pair of Adidas trainers. I don’t want to leave again. If she wants, let her leave. I’m staying. To the bitter end. The furthest I’m willing to go is to the shower. To the shower over and over again. It’s been a week since we went to the spring, and I don’t think I’ve come out of the shower the whole time. There are lines carved on my fingers. I’m cold. And I’m still under the shower.

She’s knocking on the door.

Once, she used to come in without knocking.

I’m going to Hila’s, she said.

Bye.

I have a treatment.

Enjoy.

Will you be here when I get back? she asks. And for a minute, I’m not sure whether she means in general or specifically.

No, I finally answer. I’m going to David’s. He was all excited when he called yesterday. He said I have to hear their new song and read the lyrics to me on the phone. ‘It’s time you landed, Superman, it’s time … to tell your mother …’ Something like that.

Sounds nice.

I’ll ask him to put it on a CD.

You don’t have to.

It’s not a problem.

Then OK. I have to get going.

Regards to Hila … Shanti … What’s she calling herself these days?

*

I felt as if three hands were moving over my body. Not one. Not two. Hila suddenly had three hands: one was holding the back of my neck, the second was rubbing my forehead and the third was burning in the centre of my stomach, warming my bellybutton and finally making me relax a little. Until that minute, I’d been worried: what did she mean by a combination of massage and Reiki? I’d never heard of anything like that, and what was that phoney opening conversation all about — knees to knees, how am I, how do I feel. Bad, thank you. At Bezalel, they’ve already told me that if I don’t hand in my proposal for the project by the end of the month, I’ve lost the year. My boyfriend is falling apart. He goes from breaking dishes to being weirdly quiet and I’ve already told you that he’s plotting to leave the apartment. My legs are ruined from waitressing so much. The major pain is in my ankles, but it radiates up to my knees, and I have a splitting headache every other day and enough, Hila, you’re probably sorry you asked. Actually I’m not, Hila said in a soft voice, not hers, and went on: and what do you expect from this treatment? The truth? I said without looking her in the eye, I don’t expect anything. You know I’m not a big believer in these things. I only came because we set dates and cancelled so many times before. OK, Noa, she said, elegantly sidestepping my ingratitude, think of this as a gift. If you could ask me for anything, what would you want the most? The thing I’d want the most, I heard myself saying suddenly, is to hear that inner voice of mine again that tells me what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s real and what’s fake, what’s important and what isn’t. There’s so much noise that I can’t hear that voice any more, do you understand? Yes, perfectly, Hila said in a way that made me feel she really did understand, and she added: I don’t know whether one treatment can give you that voice back, but at least we’ll try to get some quiet flowing through you, OK?

OK, I agreed, though I was still a little suspicious because how exactly can you make quiet flow? Hila gestured for me to get on a massage table and asked me to lie on my stomach. I asked her if I could close my eyes and she said, it’s recommended. I wanted to ask her why it was recommended, but I didn’t, I just closed my eyes. She clicked something that sounded like the button of a tape recorder and harmless, circular music filled the room. She came over to me and stood at the edge of the table. I heard her breathing next to me, and when I opened half an eye to peek, I saw that she was rubbing her hands together. Like a fly, I thought, and closed my eyes again so as not to embarrass her. Then she started to touch me, gently, a touch here, a touch there. At first, it made me shrink back because suddenly it felt weird that Hila, who has known me from the time I was born and never touched me, except for those little kisses on the cheek when we meet up and slightly longer hugs when we see each other after long trips, it suddenly felt weird that her hands were moving along my almost naked body, touching places I only let Amir touch, and I thought that maybe I should have gone to someone I don’t know. I thought, what if all this touching gets me excited. Now, for instance, she’s touching my neck and my neck is very sensitive, yes, right there. And what if all of a sudden I feel a pulse between my legs. It could be awkward, very awkward, and confusing, as if I really needed more confusion in my life now. But no, her touches were fluttery, not demanding, not ‘those kind’ of touches, and after all, this was Hila and I could loosen my bum a little, let my tensed buttocks relax, first the right one, then the left. I gradually let go. Loosened up. I took longer, deeper breaths, like Hila asked me to, and I let my eyelids drop. When I started to feel that there were three hands, not two, I said to myself, or more accurately, mumbled to myself, OK, now we really are in the twilight zone and anything goes, and I let myself go completely. I surrendered to the heat flowing from her fingers into my body, flowing from my knees to my elbows, from my thumbs to the top of my head. I almost stopped thinking; I mean, I didn’t have any more coherent thoughts, just vague, general sensations like, for example, that Hila really loves me, that I could tell from every touch how much feeling she had for me. Now turn over, she said. Slowly, from your left shoulder. I rolled over heavily, limb after limb, till I was on my back. Again, I felt slightly exposed, but Hila put her three hands on my forehead, just rested them there and waited for me to start breathing slowly again. Then she moved to my collarbone, which Amir likes so much, and moved along the length of it, deeply under it, removing poisons I didn’t know were there, made them flow out of me through her fingers, then removed them again and made them flow out again. Then she disappeared for a minute, leaving my body alone to enjoy the purification, and came back a second before I could feel abandoned, straight to my lower stomach. She kneaded it lightly, very lightly, and from there, she climbed to that spot between my stomach and my chest where you still can’t feel any bones yet, but you can feel muscles. She pressed it long and hard, and suddenly I was flooded with a wave of clarity as if Hila had pressed a switch that had turned on a light in my chest. I said, that’s good, there, press it again. She did, and I was flooded with whiteness again, and something started to itch inside me, something wanted to burst out of me through that exact spot. Hila kept on pressing there and kneading around that spot, pressing and kneading until she’d removed the thing that had wanted to come out so much, the thing that had waited so long — huge waves of wild laughter that shook my whole body and brought tears to my eyes. I was astonished. It was supposed to be weeping. All the early signs indicated weeping. But I kept on laughing and laughing and laughing, the way I hadn’t laughed in months, the way I hadn’t laughed since I moved in with Amir.

Then I was silent. Small ripples of laughter still shook my body, but Hila calmed them without touching, without speaking. She just put her hands on my chest and it stopped. I was breathing long, peaceful breaths again and she could continue in the direction of my feet. Weird. Every spot she pressed had a sister spot somewhere else on my body. She pressed my heel, and I felt it in the back of my neck. She pressed under my big toe and I felt it in my knee. Even spots in my hand responded. She finished pressing and pulled each one of my toes gently, as if she wanted to dislocate them, but not really. After she’d pulled the little toe on my left foot, she completely stopped touching me and I felt her suddenly far away, suddenly separate from me.