Gail Hareven - The Confessions of Noa Weber

When she was here last summer she fell asleep one night on my bed, and when she was sleeping deeply and breathing quietly, I looked at the curve of her cheek, and for some reason I touched her temple. I needed to feel her pulse, I laid three fingers on her temple, and with the delicate pulse beating on my fingers came a feeling of wonder, both sad and tranquil. What did I know about her? What could I possibly know? But then she turned over and went to sleep on her back.

Another time, I remember, when she was in the army, I came home one afternoon, I didn’t know that she was there and she didn’t hear the door opening, and when I came in I saw her lying in her room, on her bed, in the place where her father’s couch once stood, her wet hair spread over the pillow. The Walkman was lying on her stomach, she was wearing earphones, and on her face packed between them was a strange expression, flickering, illuminated … as if she were lit up from within. My daughter lay straight, uncovered, her hands folded on her chest and her eyes closed — seeing what? And suddenly, still and full of light, she looked like him. And then too, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, she was like a miracle.

TALKING ABOUT THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION

Talking about the feminist revolution, Alek good-humoredly called it “your revolution,” but at other times, when we weren’t celebrating a book, he pronounced it quite differently. Dryly and sarcastically. On the subject of feminism, as on a number of others, he had, and still has, completely reactionary opinions—“How do you know what’s good for other women? Why impose the liberation of feminists on all of them? Are women cripples, that you have to fight for their rights?”—but somehow or other we often agreed on specific cases, and if he had been required to beat up some chauvinist bastard, I think that he would have done it without too much hesitation. The absurdity of all this is that in a certain sense Alek liberated me, from dependency on a man, I mean, and when I said that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” it wasn’t a complete lie. I needed only the one, and since this one was not there but was nevertheless present, I was freed from getting involved with others. There were times when I wanted to be free of him too, but never in order to free myself for someone else, never in order to make myself available for the “healthy” and “meaningful” relationships so dear to the hearts of the members of LAA.

“Meaningful relationships,” “support,” and “equality” I had with my women friends, and with Talush who grew even sweeter as she grew up, and for these things I did not need — and I still do not need — a man.

Some time at the beginning of my years of active mistresshood I began to turn into a tramp. Not in the heavyweight league, my way of life didn’t permit it, but I definitely turned myself into a serial slut, and I did so quite quickly.

“A nun and a tramp are two sides of the same coin produced by the patriarchal culture,” my Hagar would have said sagely if she had known, but what the hell am I supposed to do with these words of wisdom? To lament and confess and grovel and beg for help in reforming my nature? Throw myself out of the window and smash myself up? I won’t grovel for help and I won’t throw myself out of the window, either.

At the beginning of my years of active mistresshood I started to work at the fund. The fund was a respectable place, but all the meetings and the debates with the groups and the initiatives and the sociopolitical fervor led so easily to sex that it sometimes seemed as if that was their main reason for existence. Later on, when people began confusing me with Nira Woolf, an additional element came into play, with all kinds of idiots seeing me as a challenge; they were eager to prove something to me, they were eager to prove something to themselves. One of them, a community worker I remember particularly — I had tutored him for his final exams a few years before — stood up after the event with a smug smile, proud as a peacock, as if he had just been decorated with a medal for gallantry. Since they were so dumb, these idiots did not always know that it was this they were looking for, but I always knew. It didn’t bother me particularly, in a certain sense it was more convenient with them: they wanted Nira Woolf, they got Nira Woolf, and just like Nira I refused to meet them a second or third time — a fair deal, in my eyes at least. And from the sweet, innocent guys I usually, not always, kept my distance.

It was quite a dirty business, all this. It was dirty from the start and it got dirtier. I became a seductress. I became capricious and deliberately impossible. I discovered that men, like dogs, smell each other on your skin and the smell arouses them. Even Alek is not exempt from this doggishness, and part of the ritual violence of the sex then was related to this, too. He never questioned me about other men, he never demanded sexual ownership of me. I have already said, repeatedly — Alek didn’t love me, Alek doesn’t love me — but just as I can guess the presence of others in his touch, he could guess them on me, too, and the guess spurred him on. To touch me so that no other hands would erase his hands. To kiss me so that no other lips would erase his lips.

As far as sexual morality is concerned, Alek doesn’t have double standards, it doesn’t even occur to him to connect “sex” with “morality,” and anything I or any other woman might do in this area seems okay to him, not because he has convinced himself of our rights, but because this is how he really feels. This is how he feels, and nevertheless, without ever putting it into words, he would come to take back his own. To take back my body and exorcise other bodies from it. When I realized this, I was delighted by the discovery, and I really began to use the others, to fornicate mainly for effect. How much would he sense? How much would I feel? Perhaps it was possible not to feel at all. At the height of this activity it was no longer completely clear to me what I was trying to do: to chase him out of me. To bring him into me. To wallow in others as in a smell in order to make him stick to me or in order to drive him away.

Alek had Ute and I’m sure he had other women, too; in ’79 Daniel was born, and I had Hagar and there were others to even the score between us. The more I bled strength between his appearances, the more I needed it. And after he came I needed it in order to regain my balance. Like a drug to counter a drug, it only made me more addicted, and perhaps this is what I really wanted. As if I were performing rites in his honor. For him or against him. I really don’t know.

The sex was sex, sometimes better sometimes worse. But sex in itself is nonsense. By the age of close to thirty, with a reasonably attractive man a woman is supposed to know how to enjoy herself, and coming is trivial, so that what distinguished one time from another was only the proximity of despair. Pleasure touches quickly on despair, removes its muzzle and sends it racing towards you, especially when you have sent your soul to perch on the ceiling while you abandon your flesh to its pleasures.

I wasn’t trying to disgust myself, I usually chose well; sometimes I emerged into the street afterwards with a light step, which is what I wanted, to walk down the street with a light step.… I really wasn’t trying to do myself any harm, and nevertheless it seems that I did. The gaze of another was stamped on my soul, nothing was closer to me than this gaze, and only it, in its absence and its presence, was capable of redeeming the sex.

Was Alek the best of them all? My girlfriends sometimes make these cheerful comparisons, and perhaps I should have made myself grade him, too. Alek made my soul manifest to me, he gave me back my soul, he filled my body with my soul without taking his eyes off me, until he made me lose my body. Not always, but often. So what is there for me to grade?