The Lover

by A. B. Yehoshua

  But I don’t care, it’s as if I’ve lost my desire. Soon after Dafi was born I felt the first signs, a deep sense of disappointment overcame me, I regretted that I’d been so persistent. We couldn’t bring the boy back. We really should have parted.

  And I see Asya returning to her daily routine, as if she’s forgotten everything, and a new, unfamiliar lust takes hold of her. She wants to make love to me, at every opportunity. Sometimes she sits naked on the bed, reading a newspaper and quietly waiting for me and when I touch her she goes wild, comes quickly, as if by herself, ignoring me.

  I begin treating her crudely, though she doesn’t seem to mind, delaying her on purpose, sometimes leaving her halfway through, a violence I never knew taking hold of me. Sometimes I’m afraid I may be going too far, but she still clings to me, the violence doesn’t scare her, perhaps the opposite.

  I grow distant, changing my habits, going to sleep early, putting out the light, pulling the blanket over my head, playing dead, getting up with the dawn and going out. She tries to follow me, afraid to say plainly what’s on her mind, in the end she gives up. She’s grown thin again lately, has shrunk a little, there are signs that her bony frame is beginning to stoop, she walks briskly.

  She’s beginning to despair of me, she comes into the bedroom at night without putting on the light so as not to rouse me but there are times when I wake up, suddenly, take her in my arms and try to make love to her. She whispers “You don’t need to struggle so” but I reply “I’m not struggling.” I’m looking around for the bedroom mirror, to see what I don’t feel.

  VEDUCHA

  A row of plants a vineyard an orchard a wheat field among them a big old growth. Banana? Watermelon? Dark eggplant? A dry dense little bush planted in a bed under pyjamas and a gown. Little twisted roots beneath the sheet like hard thumbs. A thick stem, a ball soft and damp, two sinewy branches a thin coat of resin. Thin moss covers a branch of white leaves. Thoughts of an ancient plant will she grow to the ceiling or break out through a window into the sunlight give flowers and fruit.

  They come and pour gruel on the obstinate plant give it yellow tea to drink. The plant drinks in silence feeling only the sun revolving from window to window disappearing. Night. A plant in the darkness. But a door opens and a piercing draught stirs the waking plant the breeze passes through her branches penetrates to the roots. A door closes, a wind trapped in the plant, stirring free. Her bark peels off grows soft moss turns to hair resin to blood the stem grows weak and hollow, a whistling begins deep inside a wind comes in a wind goes out and a wind comes in again. A plant self-nourished spreading thin moisture a noisy plant the wind choking in her. Two acorns bursting out of the branch, growing fine, frosted glass absorbing light, soft hairy leaves hear voices. A plant sniffing herself tasting the bitter taste of a split leaf in her mouth. Hunger, thirst, feeling. Starting to groan – oh … ohhhh … ooo … the groan of a creature that once was a plant.

  DAFI

  It’s always dark there because the flat’s on the ground floor of a house on the hillside, but also because of the curtains that shut out the light and the weak light bulbs that her mom uses to save electricity. She doesn’t believe in ventilation, either, even though she gets the air free. The place always reeks of scent but such a nasty scent. When Osnat and I arrive we feel depressed even before we go inside. We wouldn’t be visiting Tali at all, only she’s sick today.

  Always wearing the same dressing gown with the button missing right there in the middle, so you can see her gigantic tits. A big, untidy woman with pale blond hair scattered over her shoulders, maybe she was pretty once but now she’s all dried up, so unnerving, opening the door and giving us a mean look, saying, “Ah, at last you’ve remembered that you’ve got a friend,” although Tali’s only been sick since this morning.

  We go into Tali’s room and find her as pretty as ever, with a high temperature, we sit down beside the bed waiting for her mom to go and then we start to gossip with her, telling her what’s been going on in the school, giving her the test paper that was handed back today and consoling her that half the class failed it, and Tali isn’t a great talker, she just smiles that dreamy smile of hers, takes the test paper and puts it under her pillow. After a while her mom comes in, moving a chair into the doorway, half in and half out, sitting there with a book in Hungarian, a cigarette in her mouth, glancing angrily at us, wanting to join in, as if we’ve come to visit her as well.

  Osnat once told me that Tali’s mom is only half Jewish and didn’t want to come to Israel at all, except that Tali’s dad forced her to come here and then ran away and left her. We never said anything about this to Tali, maybe she doesn’t know that she’s quarter not Jewish, but it helped to explain all sorts of things, most of all her mother’s awful bitterness.

  She sits there, not far from us, pretending to read her book, in a cloud of smoke, so solemn, staring at us as if we’re some kind of merchandise, not smiling even when we tell jokes. Every now and then she suddenly interrupts Osnat in midsentence with the most unexpected questions.

  “Tell me, Osnat, how much does your father earn?”

  Osnat’s taken aback.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Roughly?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Three thousand a month?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Four thousand?”

  “I don’t know,” Osnat almost shouts. But Tali’s mom is quite unperturbed.

  “Then ask him sometime.”

  “What for?”

  “So you’ll know.”

  “All right.”

  And then there’s an uneasy silence, and we’re trying to pick up the threads of the interrupted conversation when suddenly –

  “I’ll tell you then. In the Technion they give them a raise every month. He’s bringing home at least four thousand clear.”

  “Clear of what?” asks Osnat angrily.

  “Clear of tax.”

  “Oh …”

  And again that uncomfortable silence. Why the hell should she care how much Osnat’s dad earns?

  “As for Dafi’s father” – suddenly she turns to me with a scornful smile – “I don’t ask you because you really don’t know, he doesn’t know himself. He’ll be a millionaire soon with that garage of his, though your mother does her best to keep it a secret.”

  It’s my turn to be startled and struck dumb. The witch, sitting there in that chair with her bare legs, smooth as pats of butter, her toenails painted with bright red nail polish. When I see her sitting like that I know which half of her isn’t Jewish, the lower half for sure.

  The odd thing is that Tali never interrupts her mom when she starts to prattle, pays no attention to her, just sits there quietly in bed, staring out the window, not caring that her mom’s getting on our nerves. We start groping for another subject, we start telling Tali something and suddenly there’s another blast from the corner of the room.

  “Tell me, girls, do you need a new dress every week, like Tali?”

  We look at Tali but she’s so calm you’d think she doesn’t understand what we’re talking about.

  “Tell me, tell me … I get only twelve hundred pounds a month and I pay out three hundred in rent. Please tell her she shouldn’t ask for a new dress each week, once every two weeks is enough. Maybe you have some influence over her.”

  We want to escape from here right away, like Tali’s dad, but that would be hard on Tali. Osnat starts cleaning her glasses, her hands shaking. I see that she’s getting into her usual state of panic, but she’s not saying anything, neither am I. Knowing that any reply will get a scornful comment. We ignore her, going back to our conversation, whispering, muttering in low voices, sneaking a sideways glance at the woman sitting there in the doorway, her hard face, the blond hair scattered over her shoulders. Perhaps after all her un-Jewish half is the top half, I think. A quarter of an hour passes, we’ve almost forgotten her, and then –

  “What do
you think, should I keep Tali at the school? Is it worth it?”

  “Why not?” we both start up.

  “But she’s a very poor pupil.”

  “Not true,” we protest, giving her the names of children in the class who are worse than Tali.

  But her mom isn’t impressed.

  “Is she really going to get a living out of all this? Maybe she should leave and just get a job …”

  But we’re scared of losing Tali, we start to explain the importance of going to school, education, the future … and her mom stares at us angrily, intently, listening with interest but sticking firmly to her opinion.

  “In another two or three years Tali can get married, Tali’s very pretty, everyone knows that, she’s prettier than either of you, she’s sure to get snapped up … so why should she stay at school?”

  Now I begin to see the funny side. But Osnat goes pale, stands up, ready to go, whenever people talk about physical appearance she gets awfully up-tight.

  “But maybe you’re right, Osnat,” she continues in her calm, irritating voice with the Hungarian accent. “It’s good she should have some qualifications, I’ve got no qualifications and I’ve paid dearly, I thought love was enough …”

  And her face twists as if she wants to curse or to cry, she runs out of the room. We look at Tali. Her mom’s worn us out completely, but her it didn’t touch. She’s not normal, smiling a thin smile to herself, dreaming, playing with the edge of the blanket, nothing matters to her.

  Osnat wants to go but Tali says softly, “Just a moment, what was the homework?” and we sit down again, this after all is what we came here for. Her mom suddenly appears again, but this time with cream cakes and coffee, she sits down in the chair again, chain-smoking, we wait for the next blow but she says nothing. At last we say goodbye to Tali, her mom goes with us to the door in silence, then at the door she suddenly catches hold of us, violently, whispering, her face full of pain: “But what does she say? She never talks to me … what does she say?”

  And we’re still groping for words and she hugs us tightly. “Don’t abandon Tali, girls.”

  And she lets us go. We’re stunned, we can’t say a word, walking in silence down the street, stopping outside Osnat’s house, unable to speak but also unable to part company without saying something. It’s as if Tali’s silence has stuck to us as well. At last Osnat confesses, “If my parents split up I’d kill myself.”

  “Me too,” I say at once, but with a stab of pain in my heart. She can say things like that because in her house there’s love and kissing and cuddling and “my darling” every afternoon. But in our house it’s so quiet. I look up, she’s staring at me, as if she’s testing me.

  “Ciao,” I mutter and quickly walk away.

  ADAM

  Maybe we should part. It’s the beginning of summer. Oppressive heat, I wake up covered in sweat, it’s nearly midnight. Where’s Asya? I get up. The light’s on in Dafi’s room, but Dafi’s, asleep, a book lying open on her face. I pick up the book, put out the light, but there’s still a light on in the house. I go into the study. She’s sitting there, small and thin beside the big table, her hair still wet from the shower, wearing a tatty old bathrobe, her little bare feet swinging. The room is full of big shadows, the table lamp hardly lights the papers and the books in front of her. She’s startled by my sudden appearance. Is she still afraid of me?

  She’s decided to try to write over the long vacation a source book for the teacher of the French Revolution, collecting new material, with explanatory notes for teachers and systematic questions. She goes around to the libraries collecting books, thick and heavy dictionaries filled with the old French terminology.

  I sink down on the bed beside her and smile at her, she smiles back at me and then goes back to her books. It doesn’t bother her at all that I’m sitting beside her watching her. She’s so sure of the bond between us that she doesn’t even need to lay down her pen and say something to me. Could anyone want to take her from me?

  It’s a long time now since I’ve touched her. She says nothing. I watch her with squinting eyes. Her pale breasts show through the open bathrobe. If I was to go to her now and hold her she wouldn’t resist, she might even be glad, surely she hasn’t lost her desire as well.

  “Do you still dream?”

  She lays down her pen, surprised.

  “Sometimes.”

  Silence. Perhaps she’ll tell me a dream, like in the early days, it’s years now since she’s told me one of her dreams. She seems troubled, staring at me intently, then she picks up her pen, reads what she’s just written and crosses it out.

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  “Yes, but I just want to finish this page.”

  “Making progress?”

  “Slowly. This old French is very complicated.”

  “You’re always having to study something new.”

  She blushes slightly, a gleam in her eye.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No, why? If it’s important to you …”

  “No … I shall stop now.”

  “No, there’s no need. If you’re not tired.”

  I stretch out on the bed, put a cushion under my head, feeling heavy and drowsy. I didn’t say that I don’t love her, I haven’t said that yet, only I’m sure this can’t go on much longer. To the sound of the scratching of her pen and the rustling of her papers I begin to doze, until I hear her whispering, “Adam, Adam.” The room is in darkness and she’s standing over me trying to wake me. I don’t move, I want to see if she’ll touch me, but she doesn’t touch me, she hesitates for a moment and leaves the room.

  ASYA

  I’m in a classroom, some bricks left over from the building are still on the floor, a pile of sand still in the corner. Most of the pupils aren’t in the classroom, though the bell has rung and a sort of echo is still ringing in my ears. I ask one of the pupils where the rest of the class is and he says, “They’re having a gym session, they’ll be here soon,” but they don’t come and I’m getting nervous, because I want to start on the lesson, the books and the notes are open in front of me. The subject is something to do with the Second World War, a subject that I’m not sure of, it’s always so difficult to explain it to the children.

  The pupil who has spoken to me is sitting in the front row, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, with a sickly face and a heavy accent, sitting there all wrapped up in a heavy coat, a funny Siberian cap and a scarf, looking at me with such crafty eyes, testing me. In fact he’s the only one in the class, what I took to be the other pupils were just the shadows of chairs.

  Angrily I ask him, “Are you that cold?”

  “A little,” he replies.

  “Then please take off your coat, you can’t sit like that in the classroom.”

  He stands up, removes his hat, his coat, unwraps the scarf, takes off his gloves, pulls off his sweater, unfastens the buttons of his shirt, strips it off, sits down and takes off his shoes, his socks, he goes and stands in the corner, beside the little pile of sand, and takes down his trousers, his T-shirt and his underpants, quite calmly, without even blushing. Now he stands there in the corner, naked, a little plump, his body white as marble, he makes no attempt to hide his paltry member, the member of a growing boy. I catch my breath, feeling a mixture of repulsion and fierce desire. But I say not a word, flicking constantly through the notes in front of me. He walks past me and out of the room, walking slowly, his shoulders bent, his ass wagging. I want to say to him “Come here” but I’m left alone in the classroom that’s now completely empty, in the light of a strange twilight.

  PART THREE

  VEDUCHA

  But which animal is it, a rabbit a frog an old bird? Perhaps something big a cow or a gorilla. They haven’t decided yet. A universal animal an animal of animals a sad monster lying beneath a blanket warming herself in a big bed rubbing her body on a crumpled sheet her soft tongue constantly licking the nose the pillow her eyes flitting about. Think
ing animal thoughts about food and water that she will eat and drink about food and water that she has eaten and drunk whining a soft whine. They come and raise the blanket urging the animal to rise sitting her on a chair washing her skin with a sponge bringing a plate of gruel taking a spoon and feeding her.

  Night. Darkness. An animal sniffing the world a sweet smell of rotting flesh. A big moon comes to the window and cries to the animal. The animal cries to the moon – ho … ho … oy … trying to remember something that she does not know that she only thinks she knows scratching at the wall tasting the peeling plaster. They come to silence the animal stroking her head quietly comforting her – sh … sh … sh … the animal grows quiet. Wants to weep and does not know how.