Waking Lions

by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

  In the end, what was there? Spleen, pancreas, liver. When it came right down to it, all bodies resembled each other. But it was a great affront to say such a thing about souls. A person could easily bear the idea that his lungs functioned the same way as another person’s. But not the possibility that his love, or his loss, were identical to his neighbor’s. On one hand, that was true; one person’s affront or jealousy was not identical to another’s. This one’s jealousy was inflamed and that one’s was mild. Here the affront was benign, there malignant. On the other hand, despite changes in shape and size, their internal organs were the same: jealousy, greed, desire, affection, guilt, anger, affront. He could not imagine even one day in the lives of those people in Eritrea, but he could picture clearly how they would respond to trust that had been betrayed.

  And it was precisely that duality that he found so alluring. The fact that one moment she looked so familiar, a variation of him. And a moment later she looked so distant, a miraculous force of nature he was encountering for the first time in his life. She worked the same terrifying magic on him that you feel when you’re wandering through your house late at night and for a moment it’s not clear whether there is or isn’t another presence on the other side of the curtain. That deadly triviality of couch-carpet-TV peeled back all at once, and the house under it is revealed in all its unfamiliarity. Suddenly, in the dark, you’re no longer certain where the wall ends and the door begins, and whether it’s really a dining-room table standing there on four legs, or something else.

  But now there was light, and when he left the garden to go back inside, he found it familiar, so very familiar. He sighed without knowing why. Sank into the uncomfortable softness of the couch, put his feet up on the coffee table. On the other side of the table, the other couch. Simple and present. Sickeningly familiar. No glittering eyes peered out from the darkness beneath it. In the hidden corners of the house lay only a lost coin or a forgotten toy. Or a scorpion, which was truly terrifying, but in today’s medical reality posed no danger. Eitan leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He was in his home, his private house in Omer, and there was no danger in it. In the hollow of Sirkit’s throat, on the other hand, there definitely was. And in the place where her forearm met her upper arm. Where her calf met her thigh, in her underarm.

  Concave places where odors rise from the skin. If someone were to look through the window that morning he would think, look, here’s a man tired after a night shift, his legs spread on the coffee table; he doesn’t even have the strength to turn on the TV. But Eitan knew he had never been more awake. And, appalled, he realized that at that moment, at that specific moment, he was prepared to set the whole house on fire.

  8

  EITAN AND LIAT are sitting on the edge of a cliff waiting for a deluge that isn’t coming. Winter. The wind blasts mercilessly. Far below, the Dead Sea disappears behind a cloud of dust and sand. It’s supposed to be romantic; when they spoke about it at home, it sounded romantic. But it’s actually desperate. The weather forecaster says there is a chance of flooding in the Judean Desert. They are sitting in the living room watching the rain smear across the windows. Inside it’s dry, too dry. The last time anything washed the place was ten days ago, when the cleaner was there. They keep watching TV even after the news ends and a man in a white lab coat is explaining something about laundry detergent to a beautiful-but-not-too-beautiful woman. A few minutes later, a presenter in a suit promises exciting, hilariously funny auditions. They remain sitting. They feel like being excited or laughing hys-terically, or simply ridiculing other people. Ridicule can be a fantastic bonding substance when properly applied.

  But when the program ends after forty minutes and three visits by the man in the white lab coat and the beautiful-but-not-too-beautiful woman, everything stays the same. They aren’t excited, don’t laugh hysterically. They don’t even manage to enjoy any satisfactory ridicule. Or feel any of that nausea you get after you eat too much or watch too much TV, the nausea that is your body’s way of saying you’ve ingested something bad. They are exactly as they were before the program; the program seeped through them like water through a strainer in the cooking program now being broadcast, or like blood through the dozens of bullet holes being pumped into a body on another channel. That moment, if they could freeze it, would contain hundreds of simultaneous possibilities. Dozens of channels. An endless kaleidoscope of activities and choices: someone steaming broccoli. Someone burying a body in the depths of a forest. Two women playing tennis. Two men arguing politics. A broadcaster speaking Arabic. German. English. Russian. (Eitan knows it isn’t the same guy, but the resemblance is so great, the same suit, the same intonation, that he wonders if all the broadcasters aren’t the same man, a language expert, hustled from studio to studio by the zap of a remote.) Liat persists in zapping avidly, refusing to give up. After all, somewhere, with one more zap or another 20,000 zaps, somewhere a program that will salvage the evening is waiting. Someone will make them laugh or excite them. Or at least allow them to connect to each other with the glue of ridicule. Someone will remind them how to speak to one other.

  Then it suddenly occurs to her that the person has already appeared. Maybe it’s the weatherman. With that arrogant smile of his and that eternal, sterile flirting with the anchorwoman (she’ll never fuck you! She’s only nice to you because of the cameras!): possible floods in the Judean Desert, he said, we’ll be back tomorrow with pictures. Liat knows that there is no way the weatherman himself will go out to film floods. He’ll wait for them in the studio, with his suit, his makeup, and his frantic efforts to find something clever to say to the anchorwoman by the next day. He won’t go out to see the floods, just as he won’t go out for a swim in a calm summer sea or hurry off to the winter snow in the Golan Heights. His job is to report on the weather, not to experience it. But what prevents them from actually going out to hunt for a flood? An hour-and-a-half’s drive away, streams are overflowing their banks. A desert is spilling into the sea, the water washing over everything. Maybe if they go there, it will wash the heaviness off them, the silence that has solidified their tongues. Cautiously, she suggests the idea to Eitan. It’s still so fragile that one gust of frost from his gray eyes will be enough to bury it for ever. But his eyes actually light up. A brilliant idea, he says, it’ll be great.

  They turn to each other and begin to plan. Not yet sure enough of the miracle of conversation that’s happened to them to dare and turn off the TV, they shift their glance from the stir-fried broccoli, hoping they won’t have to return to it. They’ll drop the kids off in the morning and leave. Take a picnic blanket and some fruit with them. Maybe they’ll stop to buy hummus. They’ll dress warmly. Take a map. Bring newspapers. (Liat is already beginning to tense up. Why is he so anxious to bring newspapers? What would happen if, for once, it were only the two of them? Without distractions? Without other people’s words to escape to? But she immediately warns herself not to say anything, not to spoil this delicate thing that is finally beginning to grow between them.)

  Fifteen hours later, a man and a woman are sitting on the edge of a cliff, waiting for a deluge that doesn’t come. They’ve already read all the newspapers and eaten all the fruit. They’ve folded the picnic blanket and put it in the trunk because it almost blew away in the wind. Winter. Far below, the Dead Sea disappears behind a cloud of dust and sand. They once swam there in the nude on a hot July night. It burned like hell, but was terribly funny. They’re both thinking about that now, but neither one mentions it. When the flood comes, adrenaline and excitement will blast their bodies. The water will flow down from Jerusalem, gathering speed with each meter, a muted sound coming closer and closer until it bursts all at once in a huge rush. In the face of something so large, everything else looks small. You know it could be you there in the flow instead of that empty can bobbing in the current. And that knowledge does something to both exalt and diminish you. When you look at the flood, you are the flood, and then you’re the greatest perso
n in the world. But that doesn’t last very long, and soon enough, when you look at the flood, you’re merely a person looking at a flood, and then you go back to being very small, profoundly aware of such concepts as proportion and humility.

  But when you’re waiting for a flood and it doesn’t come, you don’t feel great and you don’t feel a sense of proportion. You feel as if someone is laughing at you. The dry stream bed remains dry, as does your soul; it wants water but doesn’t say so. Because in order to say what you want, you have to believe that someone is listening. Otherwise there’s no point. Otherwise the humiliation stings. When they finally get into the car to drive back to Omer, that’s exactly what they feel. Humiliation. As if someone has been toying with them. Has allowed them to believe, then screwed them. They wanted to be the sort of couple that gets up in the morning and spontaneously jumps into the car to go to see a flood. Instead, they’re the sort of couple that drives silently in their car and turns on the radio so that someone else will talk.

  Not far from Beersheba, Liat turns off the radio and suggests they stop for some hummus. Eitan agrees quickly. Maybe they can still salvage something of the day. But then Davidson calls and asks if there’s any news about the hit and run of the Eritrean, maybe one of the Bedouins said something. Liat promises to check it out, and suddenly thinks that maybe it would be better just to go back to work now so that she loses only half a day of vacation time. Yes, that would be better, she decides, both sad and relieved. Eitan says it was a pity, not entirely sure what he’s referring to.

  Guy Davidson ended the call after thanking Detective Liat Green who, by the way, in his personal opinion, was a very beautiful woman. He offered his personal opinion to the man standing beside him. “Don’t worry, Rachmanov, that hot little pussy from the police will find those shits who stole our shipment.”

  The man called Rachmanov said, “What good is that? She won’t give it back to us.”

  Davidson said, “What’s gone is gone. The important thing is that it doesn’t happen again. Whoever killed that Eritrean could kill the next Eritrean too.”

  “Tell me,” Rachmanov said, “how come Sayyid didn’t catch the guy who did it? He really doesn’t know which one of his cousins wants to fuck him?”

  Davidson shrugged and said, “Who knows, maybe it’s Sayyid himself. He said they robbed him because he doesn’t feel like paying.”

  Rachmanov’s expression grew very serious. “If it’s him, and she catches him, he’ll fuck us up.”

  Davidson’s face remained calm. “If it’s him, and she catches him, he’ll keep his mouth shut. I can fuck him up a lot more than he can fuck me up.”

  Rachmanov still looked grim, so Davidson said, “Come on Rachmanov, you look like you’re going to shit.” Rachmanov gave a short, nervous laugh and Davidson gave a bear-like laugh that lasted a great deal longer, and the Eritrean woman sweeping the floor near them didn’t laugh at all, which didn’t seem strange to anyone because she didn’t know Hebrew. When she finished sweeping, she went to water her roses, majestic and proud despite the scorching desert sun.

  9

  THE MAN ACROSS FROM HIM talked non-stop. He was very religious and very fat, two qualities that Eitan did not especially value. But he had a certain zest for life that made doctors linger even after they’d finished examining him. Time and again, they were amazed by the vitality that poured from him; perhaps a bit of it would slip out from under his fur hat. “Original fox,” he told Eitan, “I bought it from a chasid in Zefat.” Under that original fox fur was a completely bald head, like a round stone on which much water had been poured. He would be going in for surgery tomorrow.

  Prof. Shakedi observed them from the door. Less than an hour ago, he had threatened to fire Eitan. Threatened with hints, gently. But still. “You’re careless,” he’d said. “You leave early and arrive late, and when you’re here, you’re always tired. It can’t go on this way.” Now, the professor watched him as he spoke with the ultra-Orthodox patient. Sirkit called again and again, vibrating in his pocket, against his thigh. He didn’t have to look. He knew it was her. Prof. Shakedi nodded in approval when he left the religious patient’s bed and moved on to the next bed. Individual attention to every patient for a total of 300 seconds on the clock.

  “Dr Green, your wife’s on the department phone.” The nurse’s voice was toneless, but Eitan could see the admonishing look even through the mascara. Prof. Shakedi watched him with angry eyes as he left the patient’s bed and picked up the receiver. He recognized Sirkit even before she spoke, guessing her presence on the other end of the line.

  “I’ll talk to you tonight, honey,” he said and hung up.

  Under Prof. Shakedi’s gaze, he walked back to the patient’s bed. The head of the department might think he was the reason Eitan had cut the conversation short, to keep his job, but it hadn’t been about his job for a long time. It was about his home. About Liat, Yaheli and Itamar, and his clear understanding that if the whole business didn’t stop, he was liable to lose them. He had been avoiding Sirkit for two weeks. At first he told her he was sick, then he texted her that he was doing reserve duty. After that, he simply stopped answering. She called every day, sometimes several times. Every call ter-rified him. (But was there something in him, even the slightest something, that missed her? That was drawn to the intensity of those nights in the garage? No, he replied adamantly, absolutely not. And added an exclamation point to reinforce that categorical no of his – No! To keep that illegal immigrant from crossing his borders and turning his no into a maybe. Or worse, into a yes.)

  He knew he was taking a risk by not answering. He knew she could grind him into dust with a single conversation. But he couldn’t. It was too much. That shameful moment when Liat hurled his lie back in his face. The fact that the lie had included Yaheli, those imaginary asthma attacks he had inflicted on his son. It was contemptible, and even more contemptible that he had grown used to it. The lie, like a wool sweater that was itchy at first, had become something he was accustomed to wearing. Felt comfortable in. So he sealed his ears to her calls, to the siren songs that came through the phone. He didn’t answer. To keep from drowning.

  True, it wasn’t rational. And yes, she could call the police, but something inside him knew she wouldn’t. (In his mind, Zakai was already chuckling: because she grows roses? Because the cigarette burns adorn her hand like a bracelet, and the ornaments of suffering are a guarantee of discretion? If you’d wanted her to keep quiet, you should have given her a hefty bribe, or gotten her into so much trouble that she had something to lose. Right now, you’re counting on your luck. And that, as you well know, is the worst thing a doctor can do.)

  But Eitan ignored Zakai the way he ignored the calls. The way he ignored the scrutinizing looks of Prof. Shakedi from over his shoulder. He knew. He wasn’t counting on his luck. But he didn’t understand that the thing he was counting on was much riskier – a pact. A connection between two people.

  He continued his examination of the patient and Prof. Shakedi continued on his way. Two hours later they met again, this time at the department candle-lighting ceremony for Hanukkah. Eitan held a jelly doughnut that had seen better days, studying it carefully. The alternative was to study the faces of his colleagues in the department, and he really had no desire to do that. The doughnut, on the other hand, was fascinating.

  Workplaces like to celebrate holidays. Not only hospitals. Law firms, city government offices, bank departments. The opportunity to see your boss sing, to eat something, to pretend we’re all one big family. And if not, then at least friends. Acquaintances. It can’t be that we’re just a group of people closed up together between cement walls, under artificial lighting, from morning until night.

  He felt his phone vibrate against his upper thigh again, and again ignored it. Half an hour earlier he’d called Liat, and she’d put him on speaker so they could light candles together with Yaheli and Itamar. He thought about them at home, in front of the menorah, and it
only made the department candle-lighting even more repugnant. There are things a person should do with the ones truly closest to him. Otherwise they become an empty ritual, as rubbery and sticky as the doughnut he was still holding in his hand. Where the hell could he throw it now? (And the phone – how much longer could he ignore the phone?) He waited until he saw Prof. Shakedi leave. Two minutes later, Dr Hert left. He wondered whether they’d bother to take their own cars or they’d give up on the exhausting games of hide-and-seek and simply drive together to wherever they were going. It would be interesting to know where that was. In Tel Aviv, there were luxurious hotel rooms, apartments of friends who knew how to keep a secret. But here, in the middle of the desert, the most they could find was a Bedouin hospitality tent. (That wasn’t true, but it made him smile. Dr Hert riding Prof. Shakedi in a tent made of goat hair. The fleas on the mattress feasting on the naked body of the head of the department.) He waited another ten minutes, then slipped out quietly. He met Visotski at the elevators. The anaesthetist was holding a huge doughnut that didn’t look much better than the one Eitan had been holding until a minute ago.

  “In the Russian army, we used to hunt pheasants with rocks like these,” he said, pointing to the doughnut. “Smash the bird’s head with one of these and bam – you have dinner.” Eitan couldn’t tell if Visotski was kidding. The anaesthetist’s expression was totally serious. The elevator arrived. Visotski looked around, then tossed the doughnut into the garbage pail in a quick movement expressing profound disgust. They rode down in silence.