Lovers and Strangers

  “But how long can you talk like that? What can you say?” she asks, beginning to emerge from her tears, large and bright and yellow, with her innocent Weeble smile.

  He suddenly gets excited. “Wanna try it?”

  “Do you think I can?”

  “Haven’t you noticed you’re already doing it?”

  “Me?”

  She smiles with cracked lips and looks at me, and her look says, Oh my, you’re such an inventor. Then she says, “You really have a whole world in there.” She gestures at my head with her bald eyebrows. Only then does she let out a deep sigh, and my first thought is that somehow by chance my story did touch her, kissing some dormant memory. I become alarmed, not wanting her to suffer from it too much.

  “Look, I mean, we don’t really know what motivated him, and sometimes you can die just from sudden abundance, like the survivors from the camps.” I explain to her (as if I need to): “There were survivors who gorged themselves to death after years of starvation. Or at least you can want to die.” Like me, for example, I think. Like me, during my first period with Melanie, and even today, sometimes, at moments of mortal excitement, I really want to die, because how can you bear all this unfounded goodness, this scandal of goodness—

  There is a heavy silence soaked with words, absolutely dripping with them. I sit there exposed, urgently needing to be grounded somehow. To one particular body.

  Then she sighs again, a long, horrible sigh. She lies on her back, broken in two right in front of me, and I suddenly realize it’s not only the sorrow, the grief, and the guilt—it’s also that she has missed him all these years, simply missed a person who touched her life in a place no one else ever had.

  Three days after she came home from the Dead Sea, he disappeared. He ran away from the boarding school on Monday evening through a hole in the fence, and that was it. They never saw him again. And now it comes back to me as in a nightmare, how she cried then, for weeks. She talked to herself, cried out in her sleep, slammed her head against the wall, on the table, on doors, dozens of times, impervious as a piston, and she sprayed out words like shavings. Then suddenly Leora and Dovik showed up, their debut appearance in Rishon, to figure out what had happened, and while they were there they held a field court-martial for her in the kitchen, for all her crimes, no statute of limitations. I hung around downstairs outside the building until I couldn’t take it anymore, and then I burst inside and screamed at them to leave her alone and get the hell out of our house and our lives. Go back to civilization. And they really did, with an imposing air of offense like two righteous cardinals, and Nili sat fatigued in a corner of the kitchen and looked at me with boundless gratitude. She had no strength to speak, but I’ll never forget that look.

  Then came the journey, her private journey to search for him all over the country, hitchhiking. It was long after the official search was over. They had searched for him for three or four days, police and army and volunteers. Then they gave up, added him to the missing-person statistics—how much effort can you invest in a kid from that kind of boarding school, a kid who isn’t worth anything? At that point she finally woke up out of her shock and decided that everyone was wrong, because they didn’t know him, and that he hadn’t fallen into a pit or jumped off a cliff, he hadn’t been kidnapped and he hadn’t drowned. He had gone underground, she determined with a crazed kind of self-persuasion, and her eyes glistened with wonder at his resourcefulness. “He’s hiding behind a different identity,” she explained, as if she had free access to his center of consciousness. “That kid has an immense talent for camouflage and acting. He just disappeared himself, and when he feels like coming back, he will.” And with a secretive Moneypenny look in her eyes, she determined that if he happened to see her anywhere, he would come to her. To her, he would come.

  Then she surpassed herself by coming up with the brilliant idea that I should go with her to look for him. Me—with her—for him. Of course, I laughed in her face and turned my back on her, and when she realized there was no chance, she begged me to at least help her pack, because I was always a champion packer (no one can outdo me at stuffing an infinite number of things into a tiny space). I was so psychotic that I went and packed her a bunch of scarves. I pulled out all her dozens of scarves and shawls from the closet and stuffed them into a tattered backpack, not even a single pair of underwear or a bra or a dress, or toiletries. I fastened the backpack and shoved it at her: “Now go.” When she came back a week later, in the middle of the night, I woke up immediately. I could smell her on the stairs, the whole space was flooded, she’d never had such a scent, an almost inhuman smell, the smell of an animal grasping that this time it has really made the mistake of its life. She didn’t have the strength to even make it to the bath or to bed. She collapsed on the orange couch and slept for twenty hours straight. Every so often she would mumble something in her sleep about how they had tossed her from one place to another, laughed at her, treated her like a madwoman. Over the next few days she didn’t talk, as if she were dried up. All the juice had run out of her. She even became practical and tried to throw herself into home-improvement projects. She cleaned out years’ worth of dirt, tidied closets, clothes, kitchen utensils. If I could have allowed myself to feel anything then, if it weren’t so beyond my capabilities, I might have felt sorry for her, because even I could see how much she was suffering through her exercises in acquired motherhood. But we stopped talking completely. There were no words for her story with him, and later not for all the rest either, and then I left. I couldn’t go on living within the mourning for her catastrophe—it had nothing to do with me, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

  We’ve never spoken of it since, even during the last two months, when she knew I was writing the story, and when I begged her to give me a hint, something, she claimed she had erased it all, that from her point of view it was over. She, who was incapable of keeping a secret for a second, never betrayed that secret, his and hers. So all I have is fragments, no more, the normal fragments of mosaic from which children somehow piece together the mystery of their parents’ lives. “But that’s it, it’s over,” I tell her, and then I say it again, as if one of us is not completely convinced. “Enough, it’s enough, it’s over, and just think what price you paid.” Maybe even the illness too—this I don’t say, of course, but I’m certain it’s gone through her mind too—because how could one conceive that she, of all people, and at such a young age …

  On the last evening she gets an idea—what an idiot for only thinking of it now—to suggest to him that they work at night too. He rejoices—yes! And he dances around her. She’s never seen him this way. She asks if he’s not tired, and he laughs—he’ll keep going all night, right up until he leaves.

  The spa area is locked at night, so she invites him to come to her room. She nervously tidies it in anticipation, until she hears a soft knock at the door, and he comes in hesitantly. As he did when he first entered the yoga room, he takes a few sliding steps until he is standing exactly in the right place for her, in the solar plexus of her round straw mat. He stands there for a moment absorbing, unconsciously, and only then he suddenly wakes up and is surprised to find her room so small—it doesn’t look anything like a hotel room, with her Indian fabrics hanging on the walls, which suddenly look pathetic to her: the mattress on the floor, the plastic bags bursting with all kinds of foods he doesn’t recognize—her seeds—and the spice jars arranged on the bureau. He walks around slowly inspecting. By all means, let him look, it’s all part of learning. He even peeks in her ashtray and finds the cigarette butt from lunchtime. He looks at her slightly shocked. “Are cigarettes allowed in yoga?”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “What can I do? Don’t tell on me. I only have one a day. But when I do, I want the smoke to fill every single cell of my lungs!”

  They work enthusiastically and with a kind of pre-separation euphoria. They repeat things she taught him and she finds that he hasn’t forgotten any of the poses, not even th
e more complex ones, and that his body seems to have recorded every nuance: when to breathe and when to hold the breath, where the foot points when the fingers of the opposite hand are stretched out. And she thinks, not for the first time, that perhaps she did not teach him anything, just blew some dust off an ancient manuscript lying inside him.

  An hour goes by, then another. They move quietly, almost in silence. They feel as if they are the beating heart of the huge, unfeeling hotel. Every so often they rest, talk a little, sink into relaxation, tell each other that it’s all right if they fall asleep for a few minutes, and after the relaxation their bodies start moving again of their own accord, pulled from one pose to the next, choosing their favorite asanas. Nili asks him not to try too hard. He has a long day of traveling ahead of him. He says again that he’s willing to go all night like this, and in fact she is too. She wants to equip him with as much as possible, with the richest supplies, with her royal jelly, and she can already see that she won’t have time to even touch the tip of the iceberg, and she is sorry for that, and consoles herself, and is happy and sad and a little drunk.

  During one of their sleepy nocturnal conversations, he tells her that every week he sends a letter to a different country, in alphabetical order, with the name of his friend but no address, just the country name. Then he waits. He knows there’s no chance—but maybe there is? Sometimes miracles happen, don’t they? She says nothing, glancing at his watch, imagining to herself his secret, persistent wanderings among the countries, and now she sees in her mind’s eye a completely different boy—short, with brown curly hair, a refined and slightly lost boy with a birdlike face, huge eyes, and lips that always seem poised to question.

  He suddenly fills up with freshness and even becomes garrulous, and he tells her about the restaurant he’s going to open. He’ll build it in the most remote place in the world, on a cliff in the desert, or even in Eilat, as long as there aren’t a lot of people there. “But there are people in Eilat, loads of people,” she is forced to point out. “No,” he says firmly, “what do you mean? There aren’t any people there at all, Eilat is a wilderness.” “That’s not true,” she retorts, “what are you talking about?” He is quiet for a minute as he lies on his back, holding his left arm straight up in the air. That’s how he likes to think. He can even fall asleep that way. At boarding school they’re used to it now, but at home, with his dad, it really gets on his nerves, and he always goes into his room and knocks his arm down. “Then more remote than Eilat,” he finally gives in, “on Mount Sinai even. Or on Venus.” But there aren’t any people at all on Venus, she thinks, but doesn’t say it. “There are people,” he says argumentatively, as if she had tried to refute him; “they sent spaceships there and now there are people.” She listens to his voice and wonders what she’s hearing now, and if she should perhaps save him a little from embarrassing ignorance—who better than her to know how embarrassing. But suddenly, in a moment of illumination, she blurts out: “Of course there are people on Venus, how could I forget? They sent a spaceship there from India.” That’s just it, he says, and she hears him making an effort to turn off any hint of a smile in his voice. “And the Indians are all black,” he continues the thread she has given him, “because Venus is close to the sun.” “Assuming, of course, that the elephants don’t eat them,” she cheerfully summarizes, and senses his hidden laughter, like a boy squirming beneath a blanket. She trembles in delight at the little discovery he has allowed her about his secret life, his underground, his anarchic struggle against dry, hateful facts—

  “Why did you stop?”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “Because …” My eyes suddenly well up.

  She looks at me and understands. “It wasn’t really like that.” She sighs. I sense she is being cautious with me now, and that’s even more painful. “You’re the one who invented the whole business with the spaceship and the elephants and the facts,” she explains to me as if to a child, trying to console, to go backwards and correct.

  “Yes, of course. I don’t know.” I stand up and sit down again, fighting with all my power against an idiotic sob that has suddenly erupted in my nose, completely out of season. “Just the fact that you laughed with him there, it doesn’t matter over what, but you must have laughed at something together, that’s the most—”

  “Yes,” she says quietly, looking at me as if she is photographing something and taking it with her for the road. She closes her eyes, tightens her large face, and I don’t know where she is; perhaps she is seeing my side of the story for a moment, perhaps for once she sees only my side. What do I know? What can you know about another person, even if they’re your mother? Ultimately, the umbilical cord is cut off or shrivels up and a glacial loneliness surrounds you. This immersion of hers goes on for a long time, and I suddenly get scared that now is the moment the illness will really defeat her, all of a sudden, and I say, “Stop, Nili, Mom, let’s go on.”

  “So who’s going to come to your restaurant?” she asks with a smile, and he sits up on his elbows.

  “See, that’s the thing. I don’t care if only one person comes once a year, but when he does, I’ll lay out a twenty-foot table for him and give him the feast of his life, with all the dishes made just for him, and all the sides and the sorbets. I’ll put out the whole menu for him.”

  “Wait, but what will you do the rest of the time?”

  He ponders. She thinks the dream is a little vague for him. “It’s not like that. You don’t get it. I make him the meal every day. Every single day. But he only comes one day a year.”

  “And what about the other days?” She still doesn’t comprehend.

  “The other days I wait for him.”

  She is quiet, thinks that if she’s lucky, she may happen upon his restaurant one day and be rewarded with the meal of her life. She deliberates again, thinking maybe she should give him her phone number, but again she decides not to, and reminds herself of her great talent, the art of separation, and her heart aches with the pain of giving up. I mustn’t, she recites to herself. He has such a clear and unique destiny, and just like he found me, he’ll keep going and find his path. Because it is clear to her now that that is his great talent: finding his true path, listening inside and knowing. She sighs loudly, and he asks what happened, and she says, “Nothing, you know,” and looks at him, and knows she was only a station on his long journey, and that she must bless her good fortune and not expect anything more; an evil voice hisses inside her, “As always.” And a very unyogi-like prod of simple and raw hostility passes through her toward everyone who will meet him later on, as he continues on his way.

  “Hey,” he drawls, and turns his back to her. “Is yoga also massage?”

  “What?” She opens her eyes. “What did you say?” She raises her arms to hug her body. She suddenly feels cold.

  He says nothing.

  “Yes. With me at least, in my yoga.”

  Silence.

  “So … you know how to?”

  “Yes. In Jerusalem I did it all the time. In hospitals too, when I was working. And for my students.” It seems strange to her for him to be closing the circle his father had opened. She knows she will consent to anything he asks. He sits down. His eyes don’t look at her. “Do you … Have you ever had a massage?”

  “No.”

  “Because you didn’t want to, or it never worked out?”

  “Both.”

  “It can be very nice.”

  “Is it like in … you know, in those clubs?”

  “There are all kinds. Are you talking about clubs with girls?” “There’s one in the neighborhood. A massage parlor. Some guys went to check it out.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. But listen”—he quickly runs his tongue over his upper lip—“No. Never mind.”

  “What, what did you want?”

  “I was just thinking.” He looks closely at the tips of his fingers and the ai
r around him thickens. “I dunno, is there a difference between how you give a massage to a man and a woman?”

  She giggles, embarrassed, unsure of whether she’s understanding him correctly. “Of course there’s a difference, but it’s hard to put into words.” She can feel she’s getting a little entangled. “Look, I never really give a massage ‘to a man’ or ‘to a woman,’ I just give it to the particular person who …” She stops, and starts drifting away, and he gives her a longing and frightened look, which slowly steadies in front of her and becomes clear. Then he nods once, almost imperceptibly, like a spy signaling from a dark forest.

  “Lie down,” she says as she stands up. “Lie on the mattress and take your clothes off, just leave on what you’re comfortable with. I’ll be right back.”