by Miryam Sivan
While Isabel wrote the book, Sylvia’s bravery overwhelmed her. Willing to go into the world alone at seven in order to save her younger sister. Lia and Yael were thirteen and nine at the time. They were so vulnerable and seemed utterly unequipped to plunge into such extreme danger.
Now, lying in the dark cocoon of her bed, Isabel ached for Yael. She didn’t want to let the body she created and loved more than life itself out of her bounds. And she thought not of Sylvia’s bravery, but of Ruchel’s, Sylvia and Manya’s mother. What happened inside her when she told her daughters to walk to the end of the street, to climb the two front steps of F Pani Kowalów’s house and not look back? How did one say good-bye to a child like that and go on? Ruchel didn’t survive. She was gassed in a truck cum mobile gas chamber in Bełżec a week later. Her daughters were spared seeing her strip in front of them. Here mothers are no longer mothers to their children.
Maybe it wasn’t that the Israeli-born were better trained for trauma. Maybe trauma trained everyone. There was nothing new under the sun.
✶
Isabel lay in bed for three days. High fever. Muscles aches. Joint pain. A burning throat. Uri needed to go to school. Meals had to be cooked. And there was Schine’s deadline. Lia ran the household. When Isabel’s conscience couldn’t abide the situation any longer she dragged herself out of bed.
Weak for another three days, she managed somehow. As her body strengthened, so too did her mind. By the end of the week she began to feel a semblance of normal, helped by knowing that after six days near Nablus, Yael would be back on base near Ashdod.
Isabel returned to her work rhythm. Six-thirty a.m. reveille. Seven-thirty out the door to bring Uri to school. Eight o’clock at her desk. One p.m. Uri home for lunch. Then the usual cat and mouse game between spending time with Uri and revising sentences until late afternoon when she officially stopped working, turned the computer off, and ran errands, saw friends, Zakhi, and shuttled Uri to and from after-school activities.
Ten days after visiting Yael in the desert, Isabel was fully recovered, strong enough to walk in the fields near town with Woody and Emanuel. November’s sky spread out above them. The setting sun stained thin wisps of cloud pink, orange, smoky grey. Fields showed timid signs of green as they waited open-beaked for winter rains to calm the deep thirst brought on by six months of Middle Eastern heat. The three of them walked briskly, silently, amidst this beauty.
“I feel the earth move under my feet, I feel the sky tumbling down.” Isabel sang and smiled at the serenity around her.
“I want us to live together,” Emanuel said, as if continuing the verse.
They walked through a patch of thorns. Woody tread carefully.
“What do you think?” Emanuel nudged at her silence.
After quiet seconds of forever, she answered. “I can’t.”
“Why?” Emanuel looked straight ahead. A leaking irrigation pipe created a large puddle on the path. “Why can’t you?”
“I just don’t want to live with anyone again.” Isabel walked quickly around the stagnant water.
“What about when you’re older?” Emanuel stopped walking. “You won’t always have children at home keeping you busy.”
“I don’t know how I’ll feel when I’m really old,” she answered irritated with his request, yet again. She stopped and turned to face him. “I’m talking about now, the foreseeable future.”
“I don’t understand you, Isabel.” Emanuel’s face tightened. “How you can turn away from what we have?”
“I’m not turning away.”
“Capping is the same as turning away.” He looked at her directly. “I want to build a full life with someone, not be a weekend boyfriend. I want more, more commitment, more time together, more love. And I want it to be with you, but if you don’t, then fine, but that leaves me no choice but to end it.” His cell phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and shut it off without looking at the screen. “I want us to join lives, Isabel. Lia, Yael, and Uri are attached to me. You know I adore them. Eva and Anna feel the same about you. We can be one family.”
Isabel looked away and started walking. Emanuel followed. Woody too. A sudden push up a steep incline provided the excuse to remain silent. They walked around a large pond. The sky’s pink, blue, and purple echoed on the water. White cattle egrets skimmed the surface, producing small ripples. To the unsuspecting eye this pond was just lovely. Only locals knew it as part of the sewage treatment system used to irrigate the fields. A sign, small enough to be missed, warned that the waters were toxic. Do not approach.
“Look, a nutria.” Isabel pointed at a small brown head that poked skyward out of the water. Woody looked too. Isabel caught his eye and bent down to give him a quick pat on the head. How she wished this conversation would go away.
“So?” Emanuel wasn’t letting it go anywhere but here. He stared at her. His mouth set sadly. His hands crammed into his pockets.
“This has not been an easy time for me. You know that.” Isabel started slowly and tentatively.
“Okay.”
“It’s even a bit insensitive to throw this at me right now.”
“True but when’s the right time? When you’re immersed in the next book? Or when Yael’s on her post-army trek in Peru or China? Or ’til the next national crisis . . .”
“. . . only thing reliable around here . . .”
“There is no good time. There is only now. This is the absolutely right time. I love you, Issie. I want to take care of you. I know you love me. Let me help carry some of the load. Just a little. Let me love you some more.”
She wanted to cry. How could she say no? But how could she say yes? She married at twenty-two and cherished the liberty she had now. She was not ready to say no to tumbling on the beach with a new man. To kissing for hours in a dark corner of a café. To pressing together electrically on a street corner. Of not thinking beyond the moment of soft lips finding each other and a long night ahead. She was not ready to close up shop. And then there was Zakhi. Or maybe there was mainly Zakhi. She was not ready to say no to him.
“Emanuel, I love you. Give me some time to work it out in my brain. I’m sinking in the tide of deadlines. And you know I’m good at constructing things. But I’m also good at wrecking them.” Isabel looked up at the faint outline of the moon. “So much has been dredged up in me. Please be patient.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay, but not much longer, Isabel. By the new year, end of December, when you’re done with this round of professional obligations, tell me. That’s enough time for you to sort out how you feel. But I want it to be clear, if we don’t move in together, it’s over.”
“Is that an ultimatum?”
“I guess it is.”
“That’s not very nice.” Her tone hardened and the hairs on the back of her neck rose. “I won’t be threatened, or pressured,” she blurted out with more force than she actually felt. A facade of toughness, a learned default from New York.
“So be it.” Emanuel looked toward the mountain range in the west. “I’m tired of waiting at the table for scraps.”
They continued walking. Emanuel pulled at dead stalks in the field and without a word sprinted away. Woody ran after him until he realized Isabel was not following. He short stopped and ran back to her, fast as he could, panting and confused. Isabel walked slowly between long rows of grape vines. The fruit had been picked in August and September. The rank and file vines were recently pruned, prepped for winter’s hibernation. Skeletal they looked like anorexic golems or Christs on crosses.
Isabel took her time getting back home. Emanuel was leaning against the gate. She opened the front door. Emanuel hesitated but entered. They drank cold water by the kitchen sink immersed in aggravation and silence. The day darkened prematurely at five.
4
Her monthly massage with Mati could not have come at a better
time. Emanuel’s ambush opened up another front sapping her resistance. She drove quickly, desperate for the deep probing release, the state of well-being she always carried away from Mati’s clinic. His old hands and thick fingers kneaded her upper back with patience and intent. The same deep press and roll he used with dough in the early morning hours of Friday. When they emerged from the oven, he delivered about a dozen challah breads to assorted relatives and friends. Isabel too sometimes. A diagnosis of high blood pressure brought on the baking. Doctor’s orders. Isabel let out a long swallow of air as Mati’s hands moved to her mid-back. Less tension there. It would not hurt as much.
“You’ve had a rough time of it.” Mati worked along her spine. “You’ve got to find a healthy release. There’s a price to pay for this level of strain.”
“Maybe I should start baking.”
“Ha. I can think of a few other past-times that would suit you more. Nothing like seeking out new pastures, Isabel. I personally don’t have the energy anymore but you, well, at your age . . .”
Isabel laughed into the donut hole in the treatment bed. The entire town knew Mati spent the better part of his married life bedding other women. Since she never talked to Mati about her sex life he knew nothing about Zakhi. Or Jiri. Only Emanuel. In fact she knew Mati through Emanuel. Maybe on their own Mati’s enormous hands felt that Isabel didn’t entirely neglect the intrigue or the chase.
“Sex is a fantastic release,” he said, leaving no doubt of his intended meaning. “Especially with a young lover.”
Isabel smiled and thought of Zakhi. She didn’t need Mati’s encouragement. But his enthusiasm for sex, his assumption that sex was a gift people didn’t take advantage of enough, strengthened her resolve to carry on.
“But don’t fall in love.” He worked the muscles of her lower back. “Don’t get confused. Don’t give over power.”
Isabel stopped smiling. Luckily Mati couldn’t see her face. She was already kind of in love with Zakhi, and hints of the terrible vulnerability Mati referred to waylaid her more and more, though Zakhi wasn’t interested in power games and wouldn’t hurt her intentionally. But objective circumstances might.
“Yesterday,” Isabel spoke down towards the floor, “I was in Haifa with my friend Molly. We saw this group of beautiful soldiers at the bus stop. She told me I was daft for pointing them out cause they’re our children’s age. Like I don’t know that. So what? I said. I’m not going to have sex with them. I’m just admiring them.”
“You keep admiring.” Mati laughed.
“When I came to the country at eighteen,” Isabel continued, “I was overwhelmed by the sight of so many attractive men doing physical work and in fatigues. Who knew Jewish men could look like that? When Alon came back from reserve duty, all scruffy and tired in his uniform, I practically devoured him. Poor guy, home for some rest from combat in Lebanon and all I wanted was sex morning to night.”
“Could be worse.”
“Mati, honest, you’re my guru. Doesn’t Trumpeldor’s statue look like a big fat dick from behind? Check it out. You’ll see. What can I say? I’m just flowing along. The modern state put the zayin back into Zion and I like it.” Isabel heard the bravado in her words, an effective cover against exposure, but also true unto itself. When she shared this same playful insight with Molly she retorted that when she came here as a tourist from Ireland it wasn’t the men that got her attention but the hairdressers who actually knew what to do with her wild curly hair.
Mati laughed out loud. “That’s my girl.” He rubbed her fingers, hands, forearms, and upper arms hard between his fingers. A serious work-out. First the right hand. Then the left. The tenderness of certain pressure points hushed her.
“Emanuel wants us to live together,” Isabel said suddenly. She hadn’t intended on sharing this.
“And?”
“I said no.”
“You’ve been saying no for a long time.”
“This was a very clear no. As in now he knows.”
“How did he respond?”
“Badly.”
“Hmm.” Mati’s knuckles inched their way along her board-stiff neck. These cord-like muscles were indentured to holding up a head thick with concentration camps, publishing deadlines, Yael in the army, relentless domestic demands, Emanuel, paramours, and fabulous love for her children, her mother, her country. The pain of the blood opening contracted passageways was so intense she groaned. She wished Mati could lift her skull off its hinges, oil the vertebrae, stretch the muscles, and then refit the whole contraption. She breathed into the weight and press of his hands.
“What did he actually say?”
“He said it’s been four years. Enough time to know that we love each other. That we’re good together.”
“Uhuh.”
“I didn’t answer. Anything I said would sound like some bullshit excuse. But the truth is it’s not him. It’s really not. Emanuel’s great and there’s love between us. And kindness, support. But . . .”
“Breathe deeply.” Mati’s hands lay hot and comforting on her neck.
“He gave me an ultimatum.”
His hands returned to her shoulder blades. “Not good.”
“I told him to give me time. That I couldn’t answer just yet. Not in the state I’m in.”
“Stall. Excellent tactic. He’ll calm down.”
“Or not. I’m not going to be bulldozed into anything.”
“Stay strong.” Mati moved to the adductor muscles. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about your suggestion.” He spread her legs slightly to reach her inner thighs and sprinkled drops of aromatic oil on the skin. “Do you hear me? Hello, Isabel, anyone home?”
“Yes, my suggestion. You mean the book?” She opened her eyes and stared down at the floor. Black curls and blue waves rode the rug’s burgundy sea. Occasionally a yellow stitch emerged. A late blooming sunflower in harvested fields. Mati’s fingers worked flesh not far from her vagina. She focused on his words.
“It’s the thing for me to do, now, at this point in my life.” He kneaded the muscles.
She breathed into the ache. Several times Mati had asked her to write his family’s story. But Isabel only did first person accounts for people who lived in Europe during the war. Mati and his family moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1936 when he was a child.
“I totally agree and I’ll help you organize it.”
“The bread brought me back.” Mati’s hands rested on her back for a moment. “My only memory of my grandmother Leeba. And of Zamość.” He pressed hard into the gracilis muscles. Painful but ticklish too. “She wore a kerchief and dark housedresses. And what strong hands. Large as a man’s. I remember how she made the dough give way on Friday mornings. The tranquility in that room. The focus and joy in her hands.”
“Like a Vermeer.” Isabel muttered.
“Yes,” he paused. “And within ten years that whole lot of god’s faithful murdered. Some by typhus and some by starvation. Some by bullets and some by beatings. Some by electricity and some by gas.”
“Mati, you’re a poet. Write the book.”
“We survived because my parents decided to emigrate. Sheer heresy in those days. Messiah hadn’t arrived and my father had the gall to take his family to the Holy Land.” His voice softened. His hands sat on the backs of her knees.
“Yes,” she said, not sure what she was saying yes to.
“I can count on you to help?” Mati worked the oil from her thighs down into her calves. His thick fingers ran like a pestle in a channel and it hurt. She held in a cry not wanting him to stop. “What problems you have here.” She flinched as he plowed harder into her calves. “This is the gall bladder meridian. Seat of anger in the body. Isabel, you need to stretch and meditate, set time aside for deep relaxation. And more sex. You’re carrying too much, young lady. Your body is a road map showing all the crash
es.”
Isabel let out an involuntary cry as Mati walked his hands back up towards her head. He worked his way deeply into her neck muscles again. The pain, though not unbearable, was intense. She could handle it. Because it was expected. Unlike Emanuel’s flare-up in the fields.
Mati turned his attention to her head. She tried to clear her mind. His tough fingers moved hard and fast all over her scalp, stimulating the blood. Her hair messed into a tangle. She blocked out thoughts of Emanuel, of Schine, of Suri and Yael, even Zakhi was banished as she stared down into the table’s donut hole of peace. Nothing interested her more at this moment than Mati’s hands. They flowed from her head to her shoulders. And when she turned on her back, he laid quiet hands on her forehead. Then on her breastbone. Chakra of the heart.
Isabel was grateful Mati supported her resistance to moving in with Emanuel. Molly’s response when Isabel called her later that evening was not so hospitable.
“You’re being immature and a fool. Emanuel’s right. Stop trying to recapture adolescence. Time has come to move into the next phase, or risk losing this wonderful man.”
Isabel made a sour face and stopped loading the dishwasher. She went out to the porch, stood by the railing, and stared up at the stars. She wanted to rebut with equally tough words, express annoyance, indignation even. But her words relaxed as they emerged.
