And then she opens her eyes a slit, a jet of dark vomit shoots out of her mouth, what does it mean, the story of my life is being written before my eyes in a fateful secret code I have no way of reading, it’s a good sign, right? I beg the doctor, she’s going to be all right, isn’t she? And he examines her doubtfully, and her eyes close again, and I plead, wake up, sweetheart, not yet knowing that she will play with us like this for days to come, look, she’s walking, she’s eating, we’ve been saved by a miracle, she seems to be recovering and we sit with her on the hospital lawn, she asks for an ice cream and I run joyfully to the cafeteria, bumping into people on the way and not even stopping to apologize, my daughter has asked for an ice cream and I’ll do whatever it takes to place it in her hands, to see her tongue sliding round it. We sit rooted on the melancholy lawn, watching the movement of her lips, concentrating on the ice cream melting in her hands as if if she finishes it the danger will be over, afraid to breathe in our hopefulness, and look, she’s eaten it all, she’s healthy, maybe tomorrow we’ll be able to take her home. At the entrance to the ward we meet the doctor, she’s all right now, I inform him, she ate an ice cream, and then the familiar jet of vomit again, the sweet vanilla stream hitting the floor, and again the loss of consciousness, and a low, humble existence takes control of us again, two slaves at the mercy of a capricious fate. Our faces set in resignation, the corners of our mouths crushed and drooping, and every sentence she says bringing tears to our eyes, Mommy I’ll grow up, she suddenly says, I’ll be bigger than you are, and I’m already weeping, of course you’ll grow up, and the fear drills a hole inside me, maybe she won’t grow up, who knows what damage has been done to her brain, jolted again and again in its little box, it was a plastic pail that saved her life, a pail of water forgotten outside by the neighbors’ maid, and this closeness to danger continued to threaten even after the danger was past, even after we finally returned home, every little deviation terrified me, and I was so wrapped up in her that I failed to notice that at some hidden moment, on that road that led from the catastrophe of the fall to the miracle of her recovery, I had lost him, and what was worse, she had lost him.
We’ve arrived, he says, and I wake up, momentarily surprised to see him on the bed and not her, the ambulance stops at the entrance to the emergency room, like then, but now nobody runs up with machines and instruments, to take us straight into the trauma room, they walk calmly, as if there is no particular importance to our lives, to our suffering. Dismissed in advance we wait for the door to open, and Udi sends me a strained look, his fingers creeping toward my knees next to them, and I watch his efforts indifferently, what is he trying to play there, an utterly inner tune, and then I understand, he’s trying to touch me with his guilty hands, and he mumbles, I’m sorry, and I don’t even ask him for what, exactly, for what happened this morning or for what happened then, almost eight years ago, I am so happy to receive this rare apology, a rash happiness, lacking in self-respect, and I put out my hand and lace my fingers in his, and thus holding hands is how our acquaintances in their phosphorescent jackets find us when they open the door, and wheel the gurney out with surprising ease, as if it were empty.
A swarming hive of illness and pain greets our eyes as we are led in, him on the gurney and me on trembling legs, making my way through the crowds besieging the doors, as if some rare product is being distributed, how capricious health is, wandering freely about the streets and refusing to set foot in here, and again I feel ashamed of my new suit, Udi was right, flaunting my elegant health before the sick, provoking fate, provoking him, his body sliding from the gurney onto the bed, where he lies, an aging boy in gym shorts, his body unblemished, not like the woman opposite him, whose leg is swollen and bleeding, or his neighbor on the other side of the curtain, under whose transparent skin you can see the bones being eaten up, a white mask over her mouth, as if there is still something on earth that endangers her more than the devil inside her. Why was I in such a hurry to bring him here, this is no place for him, he’s never ill, and I feel like bending over him and whispering in his ear, come, Udigi, let’s get out of here, let’s go home. Suddenly the tense, stifling house we have just left turns into a kingdom of joy and loving kindness, our gloomy bedroom seems attractive and seductive, come on, move your legs already, they can’t really be paralyzed, it would be as if the earth suddenly stopped turning one morning, and I brush his hair back, exposing his high forehead, wavy wrinkles crossing it like hills, Udigi, you remember how you would come to me in the classroom at the ten o’clock break and say, let’s run away and go home, and we would leave at once, buying bagels with shiny grains of salt on them on the way, which I would wear on my wrist like a bracelet, and go to my house or yours, whichever was empty that morning, and Udi sighs, I wish I could run away with you now, Noam, the boy’s name he would call me then, combining affection with complaint, because I was still completely flat, and my hair was cut short and from a distance we looked like a couple of boys. If you really want to we can, I keep at him, Udi, concentrate, make an effort, and he examines me almost pityingly, you just won’t accept anything that doesn’t suit you, don’t you understand that I can’t, as if there’s some short circuit, how can I put it so that you’ll understand, and I bow my head, it’s hard for me to see his mouth biting off the words with such appetite, my eyes are fixed on the floor, the understanding like a darting squirrel, coming closer and disappearing, only the tip of its bushy tail peeping out between the beds, all morning I’ve been trying to understand and not understand, to approach him and distance myself from him, the contradictory efforts are wearing me out, my hands wander over his skull, from outside everything looks normal, no bumps, no distortion, and the moment it seems to me that I have succeeded in tempting the squirrel with nuts it’s trapped, the curtain opens aggressively and a young nurse with a firm, pretty face asks what the problem is.
I can’t move my legs, he informs her with a friendly smile, and my hands are weak, and she looks at his hands, one of them is still clutched in mine, and the hint of a sneer flashes across her face at the sight, you think that will help you, says her pretty face, you imagine that being two gives you strength, but disease isn’t impressed by such gestures, disease enjoys separating couples. When did it begin, she asks indifferently, and he says, this morning, I woke up this morning and I couldn’t get out of bed, the astonishment in his voice is still fresh, and he is ready in his innocence to share it with anyone interested, even the woman moaning next to him falls silent for a moment and stares at him from a bloodshot eye, making room for his absolute astonishment at this fundamental change in the status quo, and it seems that the great space of the hall is filled with the astonishment of Newman Ehud, son of Israel, as would soon be written on the labels stuck to his bed, the popular tour guide, almost forty years old, married and father of one daughter, whose limbs refuse to obey him.
In an inadequate, inappropriate response, she rummages in the pocket of her gown, takes out a thermometer, and holds it out to him, and I hurry to take it from her hand, so I won’t have to watch the strange fumblings of his fingers again, and she asks, where are the forms, and I look round, what forms? You have to go and arrange for his admission, she says, her look as hostile as if she’s caught us stealing into a movie without tickets, and I leave them reluctantly to join the crowded line of people huddled together, standing shoulder to shoulder while over every head this elemental, innocent astonishment hovers, the astonishment of someone suddenly finding himself in an ugly foreign country, without knowing if he can ever get out of it. In a few days they’ll get used to it, sit in bitter resignation next to their loved ones in the different departments, and only the memory of their astonishment will rouse them for a moment, like the sight of a blurred childhood scene, almost meaningless, loved for no reason.
When I’m without him, far from his motionless legs, from his closed eyes that see me from the age of twelve, from his whole being that defines me more than itself, a moment be
fore it’s my turn to stand in front of the counter and receive the empty forms that will soon be filled with worrying data, the terrible sadness of the flight of movement from his body, like the flight of the Holy Spirit from the Temple before its destruction, strikes me like a blow, and the force of the blow dwarfs me, until all the people surrounding me look like giants, and I wonder how anyone can notice me at all, like the freckled clerk who says impatiently, yes, lady. Because I don’t exist, the sorrow of this morning has wiped out my existence, because you’ll finish your shift and go home, and you know what you’ll find there, whereas everything familiar in my life has been ground to dust in a single morning, because my Udi is sick, Udi is paralyzed, he won’t leave me anymore and he won’t come back to me.
When I return, my hands full of forms and labels, where all the details are correct and nevertheless insulting, to Newman Ehud, son of Israel, with the anxious heart of a mother who has left her child in the hands of an unfamiliar nanny, I suddenly forget exactly where he is, opening curtain after curtain, intruding in my panic on the privacy of as yet unexamined patients, for a moment it seems to me that I’ll never be able to recognize him, they are all colored by the greenish curtains, covered to the chin with wretched blankets, and only his curtains are open, he lies exposed like a child with no shame, obediently taking his temperature, acknowledging me with a bleak nod, on his arm there is already a transparent tube attached to an infusion, and it seems I have been absent for hours, so great is the change that has taken place in him. Now he already belongs here, in spite of his boyish appearance, in spite of his gym shorts and tee-shirt, and I look with hostility at the nurse calmly making the rounds of the patients, as if she has beaten me in a battle for his heart. Let’s take the thermometer out already, I say resentfully, it’s been there long enough, but he shakes his head obstinately, only when the nurse says so, he hisses through his teeth, and I say irritably, I don’t believe you, Udi, you need permission for that, and he says, yes, she said to leave it in my mouth, and shrugs submissive shoulders. He was always so rebellious, he never obeyed anyone, not his teachers in school or his officers in the army, and they always forgave him in the end, how can a person change so much in a single morning, as if the defeat of his legs has brought down the building of his inner self.
I see his eyes transfixed by the brusque, efficient movements of the nurse, the thermometer in his mouth relieving him of the need to speak to me, I’ve never seen him look at a woman like this before, other women didn’t interest him, so he claimed at any rate, and I believed him, he always flaunted his faithfulness at me, a reassuring white flag over a threatening sea, but this demonstrative faithfulness turned over the years into a weapon against me, another way of putting me down, of proving his superiority. He concentrated exclusively on me, only at me he aimed the poisoned darts of his caprices, his jealousies, his inner conflicts, his endless lust, but now when I see him look so yearningly at her I hug my ribs in insult, a chill of loneliness makes me shiver, as if I have just been cast out of my home, without even being allowed to get dressed.
Now she comes up to us and he lets her take the thermometer out of his mouth, with the ingratiating smile of a child giving his mother a present, but even though the thermometer almost stuck to his mouth it was in there so long, he has no fever, ninety-eight point six, she writes contemptuously on the chart attached to his bed, and raises the blanket for a moment, giving me an astounded glimpse of the narrow tube coiling from his penis, leading to a bag hanging under the bed and gradually filling with an orange liquid. Everything the body tries so hard to hide is revealed here with such ease, when did she have time to insert the tube, perhaps it was then that the intimacy arose between them, and now she holds his hand and measures his blood pressure and his pulse, until she finally lets go, writes down the results and turns her back to him, the doctor will be here in a minute, she says, and walks away, not seeing the obsequious smile he sends her, but I see it very well.
When the doctor arrives, insultingly young, a child, so that it’s almost embarrassing to admit how eagerly we awaited him, brisk and impatient, he listens smooth-faced to the morning’s events, how many times can he repeat the story of the disobedient legs, it doesn’t bore Udi, but it soon bores the doctor, whatever little civility he possesses vanishes, and like a child sick of listening to his father’s dull reminiscences, he cuts him short, feels the famous legs, heroes of the morning, and then he takes a needle from his pocket and begins to stab. In astonishment I watch the leg swallowing the needle while Udi doesn’t make a sound, and the needle goes on traveling up and down his legs, a little hammer joins it, tapping the knees mute as logs, and Udi goes on smiling his obsequious smile, proud as a fakir, until the doctor puts his instruments back in his pocket, looks at the chart on the bed and hurriedly pronounces, first of all we need an X ray, to see if there’s any damage to the spine, and we’ll proceed from there, and then he’s gone.
I drag the bed through the crowded passages, on the glass walls our figures are momentarily reflected, here we are, Udi and I, and the infusion and the catheter, two couples going out for a stroll through the hospital corridors. Where’s the X-ray department here, I ask, where’s the elevator, how will we all fit into one elevator, one after the other they arrive full, I don’t even try to squeeze in, but now they’re making room for me, people are hugging the metal walls, holding their stomachs in, breathing shallowly, just so that we can join them, Udi and I, and the infusion with the transparent liquid, and the catheter with the orange liquid, on this downward slide, to the dark X-ray rooms, lit by sickly neon that never goes off, more stable than the sunlight, but at the end of the corridor we see a flickering light, a completely bald child is leaning with his thin shoulders on the switch, turning it on and off, and I see Udi blink his eyes, try to sit up, leave that switch alone, he yells, haven’t you got anything else to do, it’s impossible to see anything like this, it’s ruining my eyes. What’s the matter with you today, I whisper to him, what are you yelling at him for, can’t you see he’s sick, and Udi locks his face, as always when he’s criticized, I’m sick too, he snaps, and I go up to the child, hesitantly touch his arm, don’t pay attention to him, I say, it’s his problem, nothing to do with you, and the child shrugs his shoulders, as far as he’s concerned it really doesn’t matter, but for me the distinction was essential, how many times have I heard Anat repeat, it’s him, not you, they’re his problems, not yours, and I would say, but if we’re together his problems are mine too, that kind of separation is impossible, and she would insist, deep inside it’s possible.
It seems to me that the child is mumbling something, and I bend down to the bald yellow head, what did you say? And he repeats, I’m not a boy I’m a girl, and to me it sounds like some meaningless mantra, but then he straightens up and I see little budding breasts sprouting from the sick body, as if some mighty battle is raging inside it, between the thrust of life and the forces of death, you can almost see two hands wrestling under the shirt, trying to force each other down. He’s a girl, he’s not a boy, as if this changes the picture completely, he’s a girl and he’s about the same age as Noga, and the thought of Noga stripped of all her curls, her sweet puppy fat, leaning on the wall and tormenting the neon lights makes me dizzy and I myself lean against the wall, as in an X-ray image I see the colors reversed, the bald head of the boy who’s a girl streams darkly like a waterfall at night, and the long neon tubes are deep and hollow as the eye sockets of a skeleton, and in front of me Udi turns black on his wheeled bed, his spine writhes inside his body, vertebra by vertebra, and I see the bitterest of his memories boiling in his blood, tiny sperm tadpoles of doom, and I close my eyes, trying to find rest in the transparent spots engulfing each other in the darkness behind my eyelids.
When I open my eyes Udi is no longer there, and I look around, guilty and worried, where is he, I’ve abandoned him, and the boy who’s a girl looks at me with bulging eyes, and points to the closed door opposite, they’ve
taken him to be X-rayed, and I’m as terrified as if some dangerous surgery is being performed on him behind the door, instead of proving my devotion I abandoned him, exactly when he needed me. Stop trying to prove yourself all the time, Anat would say, can’t you see that it’s suspicious, what have you done already that you have to keep trying to show that you’re a good wife, it only makes him uneasy, and I try to take a deep breath, leaning against the wall and stretching, and my elbow presses the switch by mistake and again the light goes off, exactly when the door opens and Udi’s bed is wheeled out, an orderly in a green uniform holds a big envelope in one hand and pushes the bed with the other, and I bring up the rear, suddenly superfluous.
What happened, I ask him, and he says in a hostile tone, what do you think happened, and I try again, what did they say, and he grumbles, nothing, nobody here ever says anything, but there is no bitterness in his voice, only a childish acceptance, and when we return to the emergency room he seems as satisfied as if we’re back home, surveying his familiar corner, and I sit down beside him, my hand resting on the X rays, a secret code that will shed light on the mystery threatening us. Let’s have a look at them, I propose, trying to make my voice sound full of mischief and adventure, but he, in his new obedience, says, no, they’re not meant for us, as if the whole thing is a private affair between the doctor and the nurse, and we’re only bystanders, and I can’t stand it anymore, I snatch the envelope holding the key to our fate, hug it to my chest and set out to find the doctor.
Husband and Wife Page 3
