by Eshkol Nevo
“I would never agree.”
“I know, but this is a fantasy. Everything’s possible.”
“Okay.”
“Should I go on?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
“Okay, so…We go into a room in the hotel. It’s a suite, with two rooms. A living room with a TV, and a bedroom. You tell me to undress and wait in the living room while you go into the bedroom. A few seconds later, you call me and I go into the bedroom. You’re lying on the bed with the sheet covering only one of your legs…”
“Like in Nahariya.”
“Exactly. Only this time my brother isn’t there. You gesture with your finger for me to come to you…”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what happens then?”
“We have sex.”
“That’s it? Let’s have some details.”
“Details?”
“Yes, the first time you touch me, where is it exactly?”
He didn’t answer at first. And I almost opened my eyes. But I knew that if I did, it would all vanish. Everything that had begun to flow inside me.
I heard the click of the cigarette lighter.
I heard piano études being played by one of Ruth’s students.
I heard the owl speak inside my head: What are you doing? What are you doing?
“Where would you like it to be,” he finally asked, “the first touch?”
“My neck,” I said quickly. So my courage wouldn’t fail me. I have a few sensitive spots there.
“Finger or lips?”
“Lips.”
“Okay, so I…go over to the bed, put my hands on either side of your body and bend over you—”
“Slowly, don’t rush.”
“Ve-ry slow-ly. And kiss the lower part of your neck. Then I move up, planting small kisses on one sensitive spot after another until I reach—?”
“My ear—”
“As I come close to your ear, my stomach almost touches yours, my chest almost touches yours—”
“I can feel the static electricity—”
“I can too. And then I move even closer and—?”
“Lick my earlobe—”
“Okay—”
“And then—you put your tongue inside my ear.”
“All at once?”
“All at once. All the way in.”
“It’s in. And you? What are you doing in the meantime?”
The moment he said “and you,” I felt my thigh muscles contract. Ready to move. “I wrap my legs around you, and…pull you hard against me.”
And we went on like that, Netta. With our eyes closed. And the table between us. At first, it’s just empty words, and you hear yourself and want to burst out laughing. But slowly the words turn into images and the images into sensations. How can I explain it to you (maybe you did something like that once and I don’t have to explain?), it’s not like the real thing. But if you get into it (and I never had a problem getting into fantasies), the sensations are very real. Your body responds as if it’s actually being touched. When you hear the word “back,” you really feel your back. When you hear the word “fingernails,” you feel the scratches.
We both came. Me before him, I think. “Wait for me,” he said. But I couldn’t. It was too intense. Too sweet. Too bitter. So I described it all to him as it was happening. The speeding up of my heartbeat, the inner flush spreading between my thighs, the ever-increasing contractions…I talked and talked, and my voice became hoarser and hoarser, until the moment came when every breath was an oh.
He got up to wash himself.
Ruth’s student was still playing études. And I thought that maybe next year, I’d register Lyri at the conservatory.
The clocks ticked. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t heard them before.
Eviatar came back from the bathroom smelling like our neighbor, and sat down across the table from me again.
I was glad he sat there. I didn’t want him to be close to me. I didn’t want him to touch me (I know it sounds weird, but if he had touched me, I would have slapped him).
I took two cigarettes out of the pack. One for me and one for him.
He ripped out the first page of the newspaper with his picture on it and folded it into an origami ashtray.
We flicked our ashes into a paper ashtray. Nonchalantly. As if nothing had happened (and in fact, when you think about it, nothing really had).
I watched him flick his ashes, noticing that his fingers were short and thinking that Assaf was much better-looking than him.
“I need a favor from you, Hani,” he said.
“What?” I liked the way he said my name, slightly emphasizing the second syllable.
“I have to pay the Greek skipper who’s sailing the yacht. And I don’t have a cent. My account has been frozen, so I can’t use an ATM either.”
(I know, Netta, that’s exactly what he does with his clients. I’m an idiot, but I’m not stupid. I got it. Of course I got it. But I still asked.)
“How much do you need?”
“Two thousand shekels. I’ll pay you back when I get to Venezuela.”
“No problem,” I said. “Stay here. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
I danced all the way to the ATM. I didn’t really dance, you know me. Dancing was never my strong suit. But I felt as if my inner soundtrack had been changed. Someone had removed the Nick Cave disc that had been stuck in the player for years and replaced it with, let’s say, a Black Eyed Peas disc.
Standing beside me at the ATM was the downstairs neighbor. Ofri’s father. The one who, along with his wife, calls me “the widow.” I was glad he was the one who saw me like that. After I’d been made love to. When I’d taken out the withdrawal slip I turned around and said, “Good morning, Arnon.” I waited another second to make sure he didn’t miss the change. “And a very good morning to you,” he answered, and I saw his expression change from I know exactly what I’m about to see to Well, what do you know. That was enough for me. I didn’t need any more than that. I walked past him, put the cash in my bag, and floated all the way home.
(Remember how we walked home from the Cinematheque on Independence Day, in the early hours of the morning, when the excitement of spending all night out was still flowing in our veins and our steps were longer than usual? So, like that.)
A police car was standing in the building parking lot.
My thumb did not climb onto my index finger while they were in the apartment. I felt like an old hand at this, used to the situation. And sexy. I felt as if I had power over them because they were men and I was attractive. And lying has never been a problem for me. That’s how it is when you grow up with a father who says to you, That’s not something we should tell your mother (usually meaning endangering himself for no reason, like driving the wrong way on a one-way street because it’s a shortcut, or going into the sea when the waves are high and the lifeguard’s station is empty). And a mother who says, That’s not something you should tell your father (meaning capricious spending or men who came on to her in the street).
That’s how it is when your mom is taken to a mental hospital a week after your bat mitzvah and the only way you can beat your brothers in the war for the attention of the only parent you have left is to invent tragedies: the boys in school harassed you; the scout leader humiliated you in front of the whole troop. I would always base my story on a kernel of truth so it would be believable, and blow it up so it was unrecognizable. My dad always bought it, time after time, just like the policemen bought what I told them: “If Eviatar gets in touch with us, I’ll report it to you immediately. It’s in my own best interest too.”
To be on the safe side, I waited half an hour before knocking on the neighbors’ door. Three knocks, pause, then two more.
He only opened it a crack. We started talking through the crack, which created an imaginary line that ran from his forehead to his nose to his
neck. I could smell his fear.
Not all the words could pass through the crack.
“Sorry I took so long,” I said, “the police—”
“I saw them from the bedroom window—”
“I told them I had no idea where you are—”
“You shouldn’t be here, Hani, they could be watching the building.”
“I wanted to bring you the—”
“It’s not worth the risk, I want you to leave now, I—Wait, Hani.” He opened the door a little more and touched me (the first real touch) on the arm. “Thanks for everything you did for me and…don’t worry…about Lyri, I mean…she’ll be fi—”
“How do you—”
“I just do.”
“Thank you for everything you did for me,” I said.
Or maybe I stood on tiptoe and gave him a real kiss, on the lips.
Or maybe I just stood there like an idiot.
Behind him, on the wall, a huge pendulum swung on a large grandfather clock.
I didn’t remember that clock being there before. I wanted to ask him whether he also thought that the phrase “grandfather clock” was lovely, but I didn’t have time.
Something is always lopped off at partings.
That night I dreamed that every person’s life story was written in his own special font, and in the dream I asked the head of the font committee to change mine. He said that was impossible: a person’s font is determined at birth and can never be changed. I stamped my hands the way Lyri always does, but he stood there with his arms folded on his chest, adamant in his refusal.
There was another part to the dream, but it’s escaped me because I didn’t talk about it right after I woke up. (Remember how, on our trip to Costa Rica, we’d tell each other our Lariam dreams first thing in the morning? I really loved you for restraining yourself and not trying to interpret my dreams.)
I decided to tell Assaf what happened the minute he came home. I could never hide anything from him for long anyway, so I thought it would be better to get it over with as quickly as possible. But his trip hadn’t been very good, so I took pity on him (there is something to what he says: when things aren’t going well for him, I like him a little better) and decided to wait a day to tell him. It wasn’t an emergency.
I woke the kids early and took them to school before he got up. To avoid the danger that the news might come from them.
On the way, they didn’t say a word about Uncle Eviatar. So I didn’t say anything either.
When I got back, Assaf was already sitting with the newspaper. There was another report on the search for Eviatar. Assaf said, “It’s only a matter of time. What an idiot. He should turn himself in so they might at least go easier on him.”
I listened to him and thought, He doesn’t know what happened he doesn’t know what happened he doesn’t know what happened. And I thought, Not telling him what happened puts another barrier between us.
The children didn’t say anything either when they saw him that evening.
Nimrod I could understand, but Lyri? She lives for dramas like that.
I tried to remember when Eviatar might have had time before he left to ask them to keep his visit a secret—but couldn’t. He’d been locked in the neighbors’ apartment, and as far as I knew, he had no way of getting in touch with them.
It was much more likely, I thought, that during the commotion of opening all the presents Assaf brought, they forgot about their uncle. Children are blessed with the ability to be totally self-involved.
Even so…
I knew that at some point, something would remind them of him, would stir some dormant association, and it would come out.
I also knew what would happen right after that.
Assaf doesn’t yell. He deletes. When someone abuses his trust in them, he removes that person from his internal list of people who are in his good graces. And once you’re removed from that list, there’s no way back. I saw it happen with his friends, with his employees.
But I wasn’t alarmed. Just the opposite. I was strangely calm for someone whose life was about to turn upside down. I had amazingly pleasant dreams that night: the Yemin Moshe windmill was blowing such a caressing breeze on me that it almost made me come; I met Eviatar in the Amazon, riding on a giant, kindhearted crocodile, and even though he looked different because of the plastic surgery, I recognized him right away because of his inner self.
As I loaded the dishwasher the next day, I thought, This might be the last time I’ll ever load this dishwasher.
I moved hangers in the kids’ closet and thought, This might be the last time I’ll ever move hangers in this closet.
I was cool and collected as I did those things. Like an anthropologist observing her own life. Like the narrator of a disaster movie a minute before the disaster. Which is pretty weird, when you think about it. I’d invested so much effort in having a normal family, and now that real danger was threatening to destroy the great achievement of my life, I was shockingly indifferent.
But Lyri didn’t say anything. And Nimrod didn’t say anything. And Andrea didn’t say anything. I waited for two days. Three. Four. Nothing happened. Eviatar had apparently reached Venezuela, but the police were still asking the public to assist them in tracking him down.
The kids continued to fight endlessly, as usual. Assaf made sure to come home from work later so he wouldn’t have to deal with them. And I started thinking that I’d gone crazy. That the connection between me and reality—which had grown more tenuous this last year—had finally broken.
I’ve always hated books that have a crazy heroine. There’s always an attic in those books. And if they’re adapted into movies (admit that this is a great subject for your new course in Middletown), the woman’s hair is always wild, she’s wearing a torn nightgown, and she’s so pathetic and hysterical that you think, why the hell don’t the guys in the white coats come and take her away already.
So just to be clear: I will never wear a torn nightgown. And we don’t have an attic. But even so…
It happened to me a few times this year. Always when Assaf was away on business. Always late at night. After the kids fell asleep. First I hear a shrill voice calling me: Han-ni, Han-ni. Then I go out onto the balcony and see an owl there. You know, with that white, heart-shaped face. And it’s looking at me and talking. In a woman’s voice. It has only bad things to say about me. About the kind of mother I am. About everything. And I keep defending myself until, sick and tired of it, it hoots in disgust and withdraws into itself.
I know it’s weird. That’s why I don’t tell anyone about it. Not even Assaf. I remember how my dad talked to my mom toward the end. His tone. And I won’t let Assaf talk to me like that. It took me an entire letter to open up to you about it. But now that I’ve told you, I’m not sure how to explain the feeling without sounding, you know, nuts. It’s a little…It’s a little like daydreaming. But without the pleasantness. There’s nothing at all pleasant about being unsure whether something you just experienced really happened or not. And the really scary thing is that after Eviatar left, there was another owl perched in the tree. All year, there’s only been one owl there, and all of a sudden there were two. One can be random. Two was already an event. Both of them spoke to me at the same time. Criticized me. And there’s an essential difference between being put down by one owl and by two. It’s hard to explain. There are some things you can bear and some things you can’t.
But all those episodes with the owls had been very short. A minute. Two at the most. And here I’m talking about two full days that I must have imagined! Now that makes absolutely no sense, Netta, right?
I know, I know, I can just talk to Lyri, ask her if she remembers Uncle Eviatar’s visit. But what happens if she looks at me with an I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about expression in her eyes? How long will it take for the people in the white coats to arrive?
They came to take her on a Sunday evening. I know because at 5:30 on Sundays, Little House on
the Prairie was on, and my dad turned off the TV in the middle of the episode and told us in a tone we’d never heard before to go straight to our rooms. His intentions were good: he didn’t want either of us to witness what was about to happen, he was afraid that the sight would haunt us for the rest of our lives. But the result was that we had to imagine what happened based on the sounds we heard through the wall. And what you imagine can haunt you for the rest of your life too.
He did the right thing, by the way, by calling them. He had no choice. That weekend, my mother abruptly changed from depressing to dangerous. I would have done the same thing if I had been in his place. I’m not angry at him for doing it.
After they took her, he opened our bedroom door and let us go back to the living room. The smell of her perfume was in the air. We managed to watch the end of the episode. The Ingalls family sat around the dinner table. All the girls wore dresses. Charles closed his eyes, steepled his hands, and thanked God for everything he had put on their table that night.
I remember the last time I called you to rescue me (and you came! All the way to Kibbutz Malkiya! Three and a half hours from Jerusalem to Kiryat Shemona and another hour’s wait at the Kiryat Shemona central bus station and another half hour on the bus that stopped at all the kibbutzim in the area!). There were no cell phones then. I didn’t know whether you’d come or not. They allowed us one call to our parents on Thursday night to let them know we weren’t coming home for the weekend. But I called you and said, “Netta, I think I’m losing my mind. Can you come here tomorrow?” And you said, “I’ll try, I don’t know how my mom will feel about it.” When my shift at the kibbutz gate was over at two on Friday afternoon, I went back to my room convinced that you weren’t coming. That there was no chance. And then, at 2:30, the guard at the gate called on the walkie-talkie to say that I had a visitor. I remember that I ran. I actually ran from my room all the way to the first roundabout. But I slowed down when I got close to the gate. I didn’t want to scare you. You came toward me wearing civilian clothes (now that I think about it, why civilian clothes? Ah, of course. You weren’t in the army yet!), and we hugged each other tightly. I think that was the tightest we’d ever hugged. And you said, “Hanch, couldn’t you lose your mind somewhere a little…closer?” That made me laugh out loud. We started walking along the path that led to the dining hall, and just walking beside someone like you calmed me down. I was even a little ashamed for dragging you all the way to Malkiya, for having been so dramatic, so when you said, “Well, do you want to tell me what happened?” I said, “Never mind, it passed already.” But you—only eighteen! How did you get so smart?!—insisted, saying, “It won’t really pass until you talk about it.” “Here’s the animal petting corner,” I said, “and this is the children’s house. Did you know that they still haven’t switched to letting the kids sleep with their families? And here’s the pool, but it’s only open from May till October, and here’s their factory, a toy factory. It’s so cool that they have a factory like this on a kibbutz…”
