Husband and Wife

by Zeruya Shalev

  But suddenly sirens shriek in our ears, so close it seems that the ambulance is racing terror-stricken through the mall itself, wrecking the shops, crushing the milling crowds, and I am about to jump up and take shelter when the wail recedes, swallowed up in the expressway, and Noga raises her eyes to me, I was in the hospital once when I was small, wasn’t I? And I say with affected calm, yes, it was a long time ago, you were only two, do you remember it at all, and she says, I remember something vague, you bought me an ice cream on the lawn and I threw it up. Yes, that might have happened, I giggle nervously, even though I remember every detail of that day vividly, and she asks, what was the matter with me, and I falter, nothing, nothing serious, and she insists, so why did you put me in hospital if it wasn’t anything serious? Because it seemed serious in the beginning, I invent, it looked like meningitis, but it turned out to be just a virus, and she looks at me in disappointment, let’s go home, I’ve got tons of history homework.

  Noga, wait, I shout at her receding back, let’s buy you a dress, and she grumbles, I hate dresses, but I hurry into one of the stores and begin searching through the hangers, what do you care, just try it on, so you won’t look so different. Here, I pull out a blue dress with a pattern of yellow chrysanthemums, this will be a perfect match for your eyes, you have to try it on, and she says, it’s exactly like your dress. Then let’s be twins, I nag her, once you liked looking like me, and she pulls a face but stomps up to me, snatches the dress with an expression of disgust and goes into the changing booth, while I accompany her with yearning eyes, once I would go in with her, help her to undress, but now I don’t dare, she frightens me, I suddenly realize, as if mines planted in her body are liable to explode if I get too close, and then the door opens and I look at her pityingly, the dress is so unbecoming, why did I force her to try it on, her legs are too thick, her shoulders stooped, she’s different, she’s not like Shira and Merav, it’s not as if she can put on a dress and be like them.

  How do I look, she says in an enthusiastic voice, suddenly she needs to please, and I say quickly, you look lovely, but she stamps her foot in front of the mirror, I look disgusting, I’m fat and ugly, and escapes into the changing booth, and the sales assistant comes up to me, it suits her beautifully, and I look at her glumly, what’s becoming of me, just as I don’t believe a word she says Noga doesn’t believe a word I say, lying to her like a sales assistant in a dress shop, and when she emerges humiliated from the booth, hidden behind Udi’s tee-shirt, I say to her, it really didn’t suit you, and she bursts out, nothing suits me, my body’s disgusting, and I hug her, you’re just beginning to grow up, your body isn’t formed yet, it takes a few years, but I, like her, think enviously of the tanned, slender Shira and Merav with their smooth hair and with earrings nestled like sweet, sparkling secrets in the lobes of their ears.

  Now I too want to go home, I’m desperate to get there, I can’t wait, here we’re exposed, only at home will we be protected, but all of a sudden the mall darkens, as if the sun has gone down in the middle of the afternoon, and someone shouts, the power’s failed, there was a short caused by the overload of the air conditioners, and the crowds stampede for the exits, as desperate to escape as they were to take shelter from the heat, a fire has broken out in a shop at the end of the floor, greedily licking at the Italian shoes, and the smell of burning leather fills the mall, and I grab hold of her arm and pull her behind me, coughing and gasping, pushing and being pushed, with signs and wonders the ancient Tibetan warning is coming true before my very eyes, how great is the power of every word we utter, every little lie is capable of setting the world on fire.

  When we finally reach the car, sighing in relief, I say to her, Daddy’s already at home, his tour was cut short, and she raises her head, she doesn’t even ask why, she knows she won’t get a satisfactory answer, and she mutters, great, he can help me with my history homework. So battered are we by our excursion that even he seems like a support, in a minute he’ll open the door and dispel the tension that has accumulated between us, but when I climb the stairs behind her I see her feet freeze on the threshold, as if a horrifying sight has met her eyes, and I stand beside her and see Udi walking up and down the living room holding a fair-skinned baby in his arms, her eyes half-closed, her tiny mouth dribbling milk onto his shirt, while he rocks her and says, shush, shush, shush.

  She’s asleep, he announces with a silly smile, I put her to sleep, as if he’s talking about the achievement of his life, and I look around, where’s her mother, and Noga yells, and where’s her father, has she got a father at all? You’re waking her up, Udi scolds us roughly, it took me an hour to put her to sleep, and I see Noga’s lips trembling, I try to put my arms around her but she pulls away and runs into her room, slamming the door as if nobody in the world is sleeping, but she rushes out again immediately, what’s going on here, there’s someone sleeping in my bed!

  I asked you to be quiet, didn’t I, he scolds her, can’t you show some consideration? There’s no limit to your selfishness! I rush to her defense, you’re so insensitive, Udi, how can you talk to her like that, and the baby moves her bald head and opens her mouth wide, shrieks of despair break out of her throat one after the other, like shofar blasts, and he looks at us with furious animosity, we’ve ruined his achievement, and he murmurs soothing words into her ear, but it’s too late, she won’t go back to sleep, and neither will her mother, standing disheveled and sleepy in the doorway, what happened, she asks, for the first time I see her deprived of her serenity, and Udi complains, she was already asleep in my arms, but she woke up when they came in. She goes up to him and takes the baby, there really was no need, we agreed that you would call me if she cried, she must be hungry, and he says, I like conquering their hunger, I used to walk up and down with Noga for hours too so that Na’ama could sleep, and Noga looks at me for confirmation, and I say, yes, all his shirts had white stains on the shoulders, and she drops her eyes, it seems that this information only deepens her sorrow.

  You’re hungry, my sweet, Zohara sits down quickly on the sofa and pulls a smooth brown breast with a black nipple out of her dress, I stare deliberately, shamelessly, amazed at the absolute darkness giving rise to the white jet, and he too stares, mesmerized, as if he has never seen a woman breast-feeding before, and even Noga, the three of us watch her intently and without embarrassment, as if we are in the theater, making no attempt to hide our gaze, while she sits on the stage of the sofa like an Amazon, the shoulder of her dress dropped, revealing a single muscular breast, her eyes fixed on the sucking mouth and her forehead glistening with sweat. You must be thirsty, I say, handing her a glass of cold water, and she drinks it eagerly, and again I feel sorry for her, she was so thirsty and didn’t dare ask for a drink, and I invited her, she came to help us, and she did help, Udi looks completely recovered, and already she is lifting the baby to her shoulder, smiling at me apologetically, the treatment demands such powerful energies, I had to rest, I could hardly stand on my feet, and immediately I am on her side, all the resentment is gone, of course, Zohara, you don’t have to apologize, I’m so grateful to you for helping us, and she looks at him, are you feeling better, Udi, she asks, and he beams, yes, much better.

  When I see her standing at the door, the basket slung over her shoulder, I am afraid that she is already slipping out of our lives, and I try to detain her, why don’t you stay for supper, I offer, even though supper is still a long way off, and she says, I’m in a hurry now, perhaps another time, and Udi too approaches the door, gives her a tender, grateful look, and she smiles at him, don’t be in such a hurry to get better, remember that your illness has a purpose, it can’t be hurried, and as I watch her going downstairs I can’t resist asking, so when will you come, and she replies, next week, but the week passes and she doesn’t come, and another week passes, and an inexplicable uneasiness grips me whenever I think of her absence, as if someone has set an unsolved riddle before my eyes and the answer eludes me.

  Fourtee
n

  When I go outside in the morning the heat clings to me like a fur coat impossible to remove, reminding me of Noga’s rabbit costume one Purim that covered her from head to foot, and when I tried to take it off after the party I found that the zipper was stuck, and she was sentenced to remain a rabbit forever, and she stamped her feet, I’m not a rabbit, I’m a little girl, I want to go back to being a little girl, her curls wet with sweat, until I was forced to cut the beloved costume off her, and the lumps of fur fell to her feet like pieces of a real dismembered rabbit. But the sticky air surrounding me cannot be cut away, I hang up the washing at night and take it down in the morning, boiling, Udi’s underpants burning in my hands, his shirts, his trousers, suddenly I notice that most of the washing is his, after weeks when he never changed his clothes, when he refused to let me change his bed linen, a frenzy of cleanliness has seized hold of him and the washing machine fills up every day, as if there is a new baby in the house, and I do the washing gladly, there is no sound more encouraging that the singing of the washing machine, a strenuous prayer of cleansing and purification, a wringing out of good intentions.

  The noisy, normal metabolism of this body called a house, with the three crowded chambers of its heart, has a calming effect on me, and I sit among the washing on the porch at night, every now and then a smooth sheet or the hem of a dress strokes my hair in the feeble breeze, keeping me company in my loneliness, because Udi is already sleeping, he goes to bed early every evening, right after Noga, both of them gather up their troubles and disappear into the silence of their beds, with only the busy fans sweating their electric sweat in the rooms.

  In silence we eat our supper, yogurt soup and salad, and hardboiled eggs chilled in the fridge, I even gave up my beloved toast in order not to add to the heat. It’s impossible to eat in this heat, Udi complains, but he takes care to sit with us, watching with an intent frown as we crack the eggshells and greedily gulp the cold soup, as if he is gathering data for some mysterious research he is conducting, and Noga steals wary, sidelong glances at him, from time to time she asks him to help her with her homework, and I stand eavesdropping at the door, perhaps something else is being said there, among the textbooks and notebooks, something I have been waiting to hear for years, but their conversation is matter-of-fact, everything has become dry and matter-of-fact between us, it seems that nobody dares to feel.

  So what, I console myself, this is good enough, as long as it doesn’t get any worse, there’s been enough friction between us, better to keep a distance, although sometimes, sitting alone on the porch, I admit to myself that nothing joins us now except for the threat of some passing danger, as if the three of us have landed by chance in the same shelter in a time of war, and as soon as the war is over we will each go our own way, and if we bump into each other in the street we won’t even blink, no one will want to remember the humiliating days of hiding. It seems that even the ties of blood are evaporating in this heat, boiling and bubbling under the thin cover of skin, I even look at Noga sometimes in surprise, what has she to do with me, she doesn’t even look like me, growing more and more different as if to spite me, her body grows before my eyes wild and secret, and one night she calls me in alarm, my chest hurts, under the nipple. I wake up heavily, feel her chest with sleepy fingers, what is it, a little nut is hiding there, hard and round, a nightmarish nut, and I whisper to her, it’s nothing, Nogi, go to sleep, trying to hide my anxiety, but I can’t go back to sleep, my throat is full of painful nuts, lumps of terror preventing me from swallowing. Is it the thing I don’t dare name, can there be a growth in the breast when there’s no breast yet, I have to take her for a checkup, and early in the morning I can’t restrain myself and I wake Udi, sit trembling on the edge of his bed, and he mutters in his sleep, nonsense, it’s probably her titties starting, and I feel my breasts, no hint of a nut there, I don’t remember that they began with that kind of pain, and in the morning I pounce on her the moment she opens her eyes, feeling urgently with my fingers, yes, maybe he’s right, I heave a sigh of relief, it seems to me that I can feel a little nut hiding on the other side too, and the nipples are swollen, and I tell her the good news, it’s nothing Nogi, there’s nothing to worry about, it’s just your titties starting, but to my astonishment she bursts into tears, she’s inconsolable, as if this is terrible news, worse than any terminal illness. I don’t want titties, she kicks the bed, nobody in my class has titties yet, what do I need it for, now they’ll laugh at me even more, and I stroke her sadly, she really doesn’t need this so early, at her age I was as flat as a board, now she’ll have something else to hide under Udi’s shirts, and all the joy of relief evaporates, and I call Udi to the rescue, tell her that it’s natural, tell her that breasts are beautiful, I plead with him, and he says coldly, of course they’re beautiful, and I know that both of us are thinking at that moment of Zohara’s smooth, muscular breast with its coal-black nipple.

  But the days go by and she doesn’t come, with muffled longing I wait for her, with tender expectation, whenever she stands in front of me my resentment rises, but in my thoughts I almost love her, warm and wise and merciful, I see her sitting with the baby at her breast, the infant’s sucking noises merge with the chirping of the birds and the howling of the cats, an integral part of the sounds of the cosmos. Thinking of her gives me a pleasant feeling of confidence, that if anything goes wrong again she will come back to rescue us, and when she fails to come I begin to worry, perhaps we have offended her, perhaps something has happened to her, I never realized how dependent I was on her.

  What’s with Zohara, I ask him one evening, and he says, she’s fine, she called a few days ago, I told her that everything was all right. So she isn’t going to come? I ask, disappointed, and he says, I don’t think so, she’s busy with her baby, and she isn’t needed here anymore, and I say, right, she really isn’t needed, and nevertheless I feel betrayed, as if I’ve been abandoned, and I ask with a resentment that surprises even me, does that baby have a father at all? I have no idea, he shrugs his shoulders indifferently, what difference does it make, and I say, it doesn’t make any difference to me, but I’m sure it makes a difference to her, and he says, don’t be so sure, I’ve always said that your ideas about the family are out of date, and again an ancient rage against him convulses me but I stifle it, it’s impossible to fight with him nowadays, he doesn’t seem to have the passion or the interest, or perhaps the love, to feed a quarrel. He’s quiet, calm, he doesn’t complain about anything or ask for anything, and we conduct ourselves circumspectly, the very opposite of the way we have behaved all our lives, vehement, burning with hurt, with insult, with frustration, and I who have always been easier to placate try to welcome this new order, even though I sometimes feel a nagging fear, which I immediately try to calm, he’s simply making an effort to change, to cleanse himself of the old patterns, the negative feelings, perhaps there’s some stage at which you remain without feelings at all, like with an organ transplant, but soon the positive new feelings will take root in him and then everything will come right.

  The same dullness surrounds me at work, when I arrive at the shelter in the morning the girls stare at me apathetically, lounging on the sofas with their swollen legs stretched out in front of them, until Hani greets me enthusiastically one morning, I finished the sweater, and waves the pink cloud in my face. How lovely, I exclaim admiringly, it’s perfect, and she pats her stomach, my baby’s perfect too, it will suit her, remember that after the birth I have to put it on her myself, and she takes an elastic band covered with pink velvet out of her pocket, and I’ll make her a topknot with this band, and Ilana who has kept quiet up to now begins to laugh, what a moron you are, you don’t even know that babies are born with hardly any hair, what are you talking about, a topknot, buy her a doll, Na’ama, she turns to me, that’s what she needs, a doll, so she can dress it and comb its hair, not a baby, and I say, Ilana, don’t insult her, everyone chooses their own way to keep in touch, and Hani fawns on
me, right, this way I’ll be able to recognize her, by the sweater, whenever I see a baby in the street I’ll look for this sweater. She’ll have another thousand sweaters, Ilana snorts contemptuously, your baby’s going to be rich, it’ll be her most pathetic sweater, and Hani nearly cries, this is pathetic, this looks pathetic to you? And she waves the sweater in the air, I only wish I’d had a sweater like this when I was a baby, I never had anything new to wear in my life, only rags handed down from my sisters, and Ilana won’t let go, you’re still a baby yourself, you should give the baby to your mother so she can bring it up like your sister, but Hani recoils, what are you talking about, my mother hasn’t got any patience for anyone, screaming and slapping all the time, I want a good mother for my baby.

  How do you know that the woman who’s adopting her will be a good mother, Ilana teases her, you think that if she’s got money it means she’s got a heart? And I intervene, don’t worry, Hani, we check the parents out very thoroughly, these are people who want a baby very much, they have a lot of patience and a lot of love, and Ilana pulls a disbelieving face, they’re making fools of you, you haven’t got a clue what they’re really like. Then why are you giving your baby up, if you don’t believe them, Hani asks, and Ilana announces triumphantly, because I don’t give a damn about this baby, that’s why, she wormed her way into my belly without my wanting her and ruined my looks, and because of her I can’t be a model, and I try to suppress my scorn, she’s found herself someone to blame, but Hani has no such scruples, you, a model? With your figure, with your face? She almost chokes with laughter, slapping her belly, and Ilana yells, shut your mouth, you whore, you’ll be sorry you laughed at me.

  I hurry them upstairs for their prenatal exercises, and go to look for the new girl who arrived yesterday, her parents brought her in, beaten black and blue, yelling that they didn’t want to hear anything more about her or the Arab bastard in her belly. I find her sleeping in her bed, and I contemplate her sadly, the first days here are always the hardest, the sudden separation from familiar surroundings, the painful end of denial, it really is best to sleep through them, and then I go up to the office to do some paperwork, and little by little a new serenity descends on me, things seem to have settled down a little, I can afford to breathe a sigh of relief. I’m able to concentrate, to keep the right distance, lucky that Yael didn’t turn up, she touched my heart too much, who knows what’s happened to her, perhaps her man came back to her in the end, and they’ll raise the baby together, and already tears of happiness well up in my eyes, and even an embarrassing envy, how happy they will be, how happy we were, lying in the double bed with Noga gleaming between us, bending over her pale body, nibbling her feet, soft and fragrant as twin Sabbath loaves, as she kicked at our faces, her laughter ringing, and when I get home from work I look with hostility at her feet, wrapped in thick socks and sneakers, and she asks at once, where’s Daddy? And I shrug my shoulders, I have no idea, he must have gone out for a walk. Sometimes he goes out to practice walking, and he comes back thoughtful but healthy, without any complaints of pain, I have to call Zohara, she really saved him, and when he comes home I say, let’s call Zohara to thank her, it’s not nice that we only phone her when we need her, and he frowns, thank her for what? And I say in surprise, what do you mean, for what, look how you’ve recovered, look how well you walk, have you already forgotten the weeks you lay in bed? And he says coldly, but it’s not thanks to her, you think that’s what helped me, her sermons and the blessings of the Dalai Lama?