Pain

by Zeruya Shalev

  He parked next to her in the residents’ parking area, helped her out of her car and supported her as she walked into the elevator that in no time at all opened into her living room. From there she walked gingerly to Alma’s bedroom, a profound sense of alienation separating her from the apartment and its residents. Mickey’s door was closed, and gratefully, she didn’t have to see him or be seen by him when she belonged to another man and another time, and Omer was asleep as well. With a sigh, she fell onto her daughter’s bed, feeling that she had returned from a long journey, though it wasn’t to her home that she returned, but rather to a stop along the way, a sort of hotel, because though the journey was long, it had only just begun.

  Now too, with closed eyes, she listens to the sounds of the house, hurried steps in the hallway, the fridge opening and closing, the elevator going up, its doors opening and closing. Only when it is quiet does she go cautiously out of her room like a guest who would rather not bump into her hosts. They must have left together, Mickey to work and Omer to school, but she nevertheless looks all around to avoid being caught off guard, following the traces of their morning routine. She herself left no traces last night, keeping close at hand all the things that might incriminate her—her dress, her handbag, and of course her cell phone, adopting overnight all the necessary rules of caution. She hurries to wash her dress, scrubs her body with soap and shampoos her hair, applies makeup to hide the scratches made on her face by the branches, puts on a clean nightgown. Now she is ready for them, primed and ready, because a person with a secret must always be primed and ready, even in his sleep. But no soap can wash away the truth that is beyond one stain or another, the truth that her very being has changed, that her inner core has come suddenly and powerfully to life—no makeup can hide that. She takes a cup of hot tea and a slice of bread and honey into the bedroom and goes back to bed to continue pasting her paper loops together.

  How he stood in front of her, his eyes fixed on her questioningly, the wrinkle between them growing deeper as she walked slowly toward him and wrapped her arms around his neck in a trembling embrace, and to her surprise, he responded, his arms encircling her back. “It’s you, isn’t it?” she said, because she couldn’t see his face. How he said, “Wait for me,” and led her to the door, and she waited for him, waited for hours until he finally came to her. How she hurried after him to the icy waiting room where they made themselves known to each other, the way Joseph made himself known to his brothers. How she found him in his mother’s house and he lay on the ground beside her, under the plum tree, and she was once again united with his familiar, precious body, as if she had never been away from it. How he drove here behind her, his headlights accompanying her like two glowing eyes. It happened in only a single day, if it happened at all, too good, too easy, contradicting everything she has learned about life in the meantime.

  But her cell phone is signaling now, and breathlessly, she reads the message that has just that moment been sent, “How are you, my love?” the sender called Pain asks. Her eyes and her fingers caress the letters he sent her, and she writes back, “I’m sick and happy.”

  “Are you alone?” he asks, “Can I come to see you for a minute?” And so excited by the possibility, she replies immediately with all the words at her disposal, “Of course, definitely, absolutely come.” She doesn’t want him to feel any hesitation or reluctance on her part, although she actually does feel some. She is alone in the house, waiting for him almost thirty years, Mickey is at work and Omer at school. The chance that they may return suddenly in the late morning is as slim as the chance was that she would ever see him again. She hurriedly smooths her hair with the hot straightening iron she saves for special occasions and quickly applies lipstick, and while she is still searching the closet for a dress that will be more flattering than the old nightgown, the bell rings, causing her to tremble with anticipation. He came, he’s here, and she coughs into the intercom, “Eitan? I’m sending down the elevator.” But there’s no one, and the bell keeps ringing, confusing her, until she realizes that it is the infrequently used front doorbell. She opens the door with shaking hands and falls into his arms, her body aflame with her illness and her heart pounding with emotion.

  “You walked up six flights?” she asks, her cheek on his shoulder. “Why didn’t you take the elevator?” as if this is the most important thing between them.

  “I never use elevators,” he replies, “they’re swarming with germs.” But apparently he isn’t afraid of the germs she’s growing in her mouth, because he raises her chin and devours her lips with his; in a moment, he will draw her entire body into his hungry mouth. Through the thin nightgown, his hands are on her breasts, the breasts that have nursed two children who are not his, but no man had ever touched them before him. She is in his arms once again, she is his once again, a flame burns between her legs and her body fuses with his in the total giving of herself she remembers from then and has never felt since. Panting and quivering at his touch, she feels as if she isn’t standing on her feet, but on his, because his arms raise her up as he bends her backward and kisses her hot breasts through the fabric of the nightgown, the pleasure so intense that she no longer remembers where she is. Even if Mickey comes in right now, she won’t stop, even if Omer suddenly emerges from his room and looks at her in astonishment, she will continue, she will not give up this total pleasure, she will not let go of his body as it becomes joined to hers, joined from head to toe. This is nature’s gravitational force, this is how we were created, as two particles of a magnetic field, another inevitable phenomenon of the planet, one of many that are much worse, she hears herself rationalizing, gasping.

  “What did you say?” he whispers in her ear.

  “Nothing. I’m hallucinating because of the fever. Let’s sit down for a minute.” She leads him to the couch. The moment they sit down, before she has time to take her hand from his, she hears the familiar breath of the elevator stopping, and to her horror, it opens and emits Shula, their housecleaner.

  She always dresses nicely for work, a miniskirt and heels, which are immediately replaced by an old apron and flip-flops. Iris always tells her he how nice she looks, and even now, out of habit, her stunned brain tries to produce a comment about her red blouse. “That color really suits you.” But the shocked expression of their longtime cleaner brings her to her senses like a pail of cold water, and she stands up quickly. “Don’t ask, I feel terrible! I was so lucky that my doctor was in the neighborhood and agreed to examine me. This is Dr. Rosen, chief of the Pain Unit,” she stammers.

  Shula walks toward them, still stunned. Her awe at his profession tempers the shock slightly and offers a reassuring interpretation of the suspicious scene, especially when the distinguished doctor stands up and shakes her hand gravely. But Iris knows that her lips are swollen, her hair is a mess, and there are incriminating spots on her nightgown.

  “So what do you advise me to do? Take antibiotics?” she asks in a formal tone when Shula goes into one of the bedrooms to change clothes.

  “The truth is that I have no idea what you have. The only thing I understand is incurable disease,” he says, and they both burst out laughing.

  She can’t stop even when Shula returns to the living room wearing her apron and asks, “Should I start in Alma’s room so you can go back to bed?”

  Iris nods enthusiastically. “Thank you, Shulinka. You’re the best,” she calls to her back as she moves away.

  “I hope you don’t plan to fire her,” he says with a chuckle. “You’re in her hands now. Tomorrow she’ll ask for a raise.”

  Iris protests, “Don’t be silly, she’s not like that. She would never hurt me.” Yet she feels threatened by the sense that things have changed.

  He glances at his watch and says, “I have to get back to the clinic. I’m sorry if I’ve made trouble for you, Rissi. You should be the one to set the rules. You have more to lose than I do.”

 
She walks him to the door and says, “I have nothing to lose but you.”

  Nonetheless, she hurries back to Shula to see how suspicious she is and gets into bed while she is still running the vacuum cleaner. “I was really lucky,” she says again, “I felt so bad and I didn’t have the strength to go to the clinic. Then I remembered that Dr. Rosen went to high school with me, so I called him and he just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  “Ah, you went to high school together!” Shula says. “Isn’t that something!”

  For a moment, she seems to accept the explanation for the unmistakable intimacy, but she still has that look of displeasure she always has when she sees that Omer has again left his wet towel on the rug in his room. She puts on her earphones now—she is always tuned in to the radio and happy to share the reports with anyone who is at home. “Isn’t that something!” she suddenly calls out again, “they say that the percentage of infidelity in Israel almost doubled in the last decade. I wonder how they know that. I mean, people keep their infidelities a secret.” The noise of the vacuum cleaner drowns out everything that is and isn’t said, and Iris closes her eyes. Clearly there is a problem, but she’ll deal with it later, when she feels better, because that problem is a small babushka doll in the stomach of a larger problem. In order to solve it, she has to forage around in the stomach of the larger problem, so she’ll wait, she won’t think about the word that had just been tossed into the dustless air of the bedroom—too bad it can’t be sucked into the vacuum cleaner. Infidelity.

  Is it infidelity, when she feels with such absolute certainty that it’s a miracle? Is it infidelity, when she feels that she has never been more faithful to herself? Have she and Mickey grown so far apart that being faithful to herself means being unfaithful to him? And if that is so, doesn’t it prove that their relationship is fundamentally a mistake? Infidelity is such an ugly word, how can it apply to such a beautiful encounter so filled with bliss? Shula has spread the new word through the house, an uninvited guest. It’s bliss, not infidelity, she protests in the silence. When Mickey comes home, will he sense that a stranger had been here, an invader from the past? And what will she do then?

  “You should be the one to set the rules,” Eitan said, standing tall and slightly stooped at the door, his long dark lashes lowered toward her. Although that seems convenient, it is impossible because she now senses that she will never be able to refuse him, will never be able to forgo even one brief, reckless meeting like today’s. She is too hungry for him, he is too precious to her. Let’s break the rules, throw caution to the wind, she wants to say. Perhaps when she gets well, she’ll be able to manage the relationship, just as she has managed her school until now, but for the moment, she feels as soft and borderless as a pool of water that will pass through any opening it finds. How thirsty she is for water, but it’s hard for her to get up, so she gulps down the tea that has cooled beside her bed. In a minute she’ll call Shula, ask her for a glass of water and casually hint that she shouldn’t say anything to Mickey about the doctor’s visit. You know how difficult he is about money, she will malign him behind his back, better he doesn’t know that I paid for a private visit instead of going to the clinic. But before she can carry out her plan, which seems clever if a bit despicable, she falls asleep.

  When she opens her eyes, it is already evening, Shula is long gone, a bluish darkness has spread like a curtain over the open window and she hears the rhythmic beeps that announce the beginning of the evening news. She hopes they won’t broadcast the item that Shula reported to her about the percentage of infidelity in Israel that has doubled recently, an item that may cause Mickey to ask where she was the night before. It was only yesterday that she suspected him, and now the suspicion has shifted to her. Perhaps it’s actually both of them who have been unfaithful, perhaps they are the ones who have raised the statistics in one fell swoop. She tries to hear the news, but the reporter’s words are swallowed up by the loud clattering of a spoon or fork on a plate, creating a link between the two, as if the glamorous anchor is reading the news while dining in their living room.

  Staring at the darkening window, she recalls the days she was confined to her bed, listening to the sounds of her family as if they were in an old radio play about family life from the distant days when sounds were more accessible than sights. It was a radio play that had no special connection to her, or so she felt at the time, about a father and his two children trying to maintain their routines as they clung to the fantasy that their sick mother would return, a fantasy that the listeners tended to doubt.

  “Your food is disgusting. I want Mommy’s food,” she used to hear Omer cry. “Then don’t eat,” Mickey would scold him, then immediately regret it and try to calm him down. “We all want Mommy to get well fast, Sweetie. But we have to be flexible now.”

  Alma actually showed great flexibility. Far from her anxious mother’s eyes, she wolfed down Mickey’s strange concoctions—he liked to cook a mishmash of soup leftovers in the same pot with fresh pasta and old rice—at least that was what she understood from the praise she heard coming from the dining room. She listened to that drama every evening, recognizing the psychological mechanisms and analyzing the goings-on, but a new feeling of apathy, a screen of tedium separated her from the characters. Does every relationship we were once part of look so insipid when we observe it from a distance? she wondered. Is it only the profound, indisputable sense of belonging that causes us to be drawn in, to love a tiny baby, to devote ourselves to our mate? Because the moment an arbitrary force suddenly cuts off the continuity, everything becomes pointless.

  After the meal and the showers, Omer and Alma would come into her bedroom to say good night to Mommy, and she tried to focus on their stories, making sure to smile at them even if she was in agonizing pain. She never cried in their presence, always tried to show restraint and self-control to make it easier for them, but deep down, she didn’t want anyone with her during those difficult months, certainly not a child. She always felt more protected in the hospital, and after the third and last surgery, she actually begged to remain there for a few more days. She remembered that they sent the hospital psychiatrist to check that everything was all right at home, and she, of course, didn’t open up to him, saying only, “There’s no problem at home, I’m just more comfortable here.”

  “You’re hiding too much from them,” the psychiatrist said in his American accent. “Show them that it’s hard for you and give them a chance to help.”

  “That contradicts my worldview,” she said condescendingly, unconsciously imitating his heavy accent. No wonder he didn’t dare approach her bed again.

  Did she also deny Mickey a chance to help? On the surface, he helped her constantly—she couldn’t stand, was totally dependent on him the way she had been dependent on her mother during her breakdown. Perhaps that was why she felt strangely adept at being disabled, why she was so bothered by the presence of the children. And Mickey did try, but the coffee he made her was always cold, the food was strange, and so was he, cold and strange, and here he is now, opening the door, a bowl of soup in his hand, letting a painful shaft of light into the room.

  “You’re here?” he asks with a smile as he eats the soup. He seems to be in a good mood for some reason, maybe he beat an anonymous opponent at chess. “Shula must be in love. She poured like a cup of salt into the soup. Who even needs soup in this heat?” he complains, the slightly foolish smile still on his face. Iris stares at him with half-closed eyes, he still hasn’t asked how she is, doesn’t notice that she’s sick, is concerned only with the taste in his mouth, speaks to her without noticing whether she is asleep or awake. Is that why she chose him? Because from the beginning, she had something to hide, so she preferred a man with such a limited ability to notice other people?

  “Mickey, I don’t feel well,” she says, opening one eye at him. In the light coming from the hallway, he looks almost like an abstract figure, devoid o
f details.

  “That pain again?”

  She is frightened for a moment, but his question is an innocent one. “No, it’s not the pain. I must have caught a cold in Tel Aviv, from the air-conditioning. I have a high fever.”

  “What were you doing in Tel Aviv?” he barks.

  She still hasn’t spoken to Dafna so they can get their stories straight, and she tries to make do with a general answer. “Dafna asked me to go to a meeting with her. Please bring me a bowl of soup.”

  Her plan is working well for the time being—he’s happy to return the conversation to the subject that has preoccupied him from the beginning, grumbling once again, “Who needs soup in this heat?”

  “It’s probably because I’m sick. Bring me some too? I haven’t eaten a thing all day.” He goes back to the kitchen and she sighs in relief. On the surface, he’s suspicious, but much too focused on himself to act on his suspicions, to draw conclusions. It’s too exhausting, he’s too lazy, and it’s convenient for him to return to what interests him, his chess. He doesn’t notice that her cell phone is suddenly beside her bed. He still hasn’t even noticed her new hair color or the scratches on her face. He isn’t used to looking at her attentively, but to be on the safe side, she should stay in the dark, and when he returns with the bowl of soup, she asks him not to turn on the light. “It hurts my eyes,” she whispers, immediately surprising herself with a new evasion. “Just listen to me, my voice is gone now.” It seems that all the lies her pupils, and occasionally her teachers, told her over the years have been preserved in her memory and are at her disposal now that she needs them. “You can go back to the computer. It’s hard for me to talk anyway,” she adds generously, using clean language to describe what she usually calls “your fucking chess games.” He stands there between the bed and the door, hesitating, surprised at being released but afraid to disappoint, in case she is deliberately tripping him up so she can add this to his list of offenses and use it against him in the future.