Be My Knife

  Meanwhile, the bus came. We sat together. She opened up and told me about herself and her life, her illnesses, and her children, who are currently scattered around the world; and the entire time she kept asking me if I was sure she wasn’t a nuisance.

  She told me she came from a religious family, and that with everything happening around her in the past few years, she is beginning to think that perhaps there is no God. The thought frightens her very much, it has been destroying her life and her health. But a few months ago she saw a television program about India, and it inspired her; a new thought has gripped her and isn’t letting go: how she, Rivka, with only her own strength, will force God to reveal Himself. She will use all her savings to travel to the land of India (she isn’t scared, because she will be protected by her holy purpose as a sacred messenger). She will go to the temple they showed on television, where there are so many thousands of idols, and she will walk between the gods, pretending to examine them, hesitating over which one of them to choose—Maybe this one? Maybe that one? And then our God, Elohim Ha Shem, will not be able to stand the fact that even she, who has been so loyal to Him for sixty-five years, is doubting Him; that, simply out of jealousy, He will burst out and reveal Himself in front of her, and will shout from the depths of His heart: Rivka, enough! Enough of it! I am here!

  It truly delighted me so much. Not just the story, but the fact that she chose to tell it to me.

  What makes me even happier is that things are happening all the time in the world, and they are not just about him and me.

  An exhibition of seventh-graders’ work in the hall in front of the teachers’ lounge. I’m walking with the other teachers, looking at the work, practically floating on my pride for their growth over the past year. But I am well practiced … I felt the dagger flying out there in the room and started to shrink in expectation of it.

  I read the following in Avishai Riklin’s biology paper: “In order for the bird to be able to fully develop its voice, it must be exposed to its kind during the first months of its life. Otherwise, its singing ability will be permanently damaged.”

  I am stuck there, staring at it, probably for a long time; until Ariela comes up to me and pulls me away, gently. I’m followed by curious, worried looks. My throat burns.

  (Come sing with me, my kind.)

  A diary is a daybook. If this is one, it should be called a nightbook.

  I got up for a drink at a quarter past three and stumbled into Yokhai in the darkness. He was walking around half-asleep, completely confused and without pants. He must have come back from the bathroom and started wandering, for God knows how long, until I found him. I put on his pajamas and brought him back to bed, and he kept getting up again and again. So I agreed to walk along his track with him—I hadn’t slept so well anyway—and there was something pleasant about it. He walked with me in the exact same way we walk in the street, half a step behind me, holding on to the edge of my sleeve … and if I am completely aware of him, which doesn’t always happen on the street, our steps match in a perfect harmony of movement. We succeeded tonight, not a single motion squeaked in our rhythm, and I was prepared to go on for much longer and longer; it looked as if he was getting some pleasure from it, because he showed no signs of tiring until a quarter to four—he actually seemed to be having fun, telling me something in his own way.

  I then had an idea. I walked him to the kitchen, shut the door, and turned on the heater. I took off his pajamas and wrapped him up in a big towel, and, of course, served him burekas and a whole variety of flavoredyogurts. It took us a little while, but he cooperated marvelously; he didn’t jump up or shout, even when I brought out the scissors. Finally, after three months of fights and scandal, he let me cut his hair.

  It’s unbelievable the way he sat, completely quiet. He was possessed of a stoic relaxation, even a little royal, with only his slight humming and rocking, stopping only to bite into the burekas. Every once in a while he looked up with a sassy expression, as if to say, “You see? It simply depends on my will …”

  Even when I cut his bangs, even when a few hairs fell into his mouth (!). What is this? I don’t know my own child! You could almost think for a moment that he had made the clear-minded decision to compensate for his horrible rage that afternoon, when Amos and I tried together. And perhaps it is truly so.

  Every time I forget, he has a way of, gently, and without words, reminding me.

  What will happen when he starts growing a mustache and a beard? How will we shave him? Maybe while he sleeps, a particularly deep sleep, like the ones he has after a fit. Well, I don’t exactly have to plan for this now.

  In two or three years we will have to be separated from our child for a second time; in the meantime, we have the grace of childhood. What will he look like in five years? I can’t even imagine it, not in this moment. Anna had a thin, sexy fuzz, but then Anna was dark; Amos is quite dark as well. It seems as if Yokhai inherited his very soft, fair hair from me (and his clumsiness, and his lack of confidence, and we shouldn’t forget his feeling of utter strangeness in the world …).

  And what will happen in ten years? In twenty? Strange rooms, strange people, and itchy wool blankets.

  When he ran out of patience, he stood up with his hair half-cut, but didn’t run away even then. He continued walking, slowly, the length of the corridor and back, and didn’t once object that I continued cutting his hair as he walked. Let it be while walking, while running, while dancing, while jumping! Such moments of grace don’t come every day. Amos will go crazy when he wakes up.

  And just as I was finishing, he hinted at wanting to go back to bed. He let me put a splash of Amos’s aftershave, which he likes, on the back of his neck; and a few scattered kisses. And in this manner of sleepy reconciliation, I put him to bed.

  I am waiting for the sunrise. I too must sleep, for at least one more hour, before this long day begins. The house is full of fuzzy footprints, and I can hardly hold myself back from waking Amos and telling him … to see the special smile he has for such news. What a pity I can’t listen to music right now—the Third Quartet is certainly suitable. Will you wait for me until morning, Ludwig van? I don’t know why I was so angry with you a few days ago—how could I forget you are so full of life, so optimistic?

  My social life is becoming suspiciously active; I met Ariela at Atara Café this morning. It’s the first time we have ever met outside the teachers’ lounge to talk. Poor Ariela was a bit unnerved by me and thought I was investigating her. At one moment she said quite honestly that despite all her affection for me, she still becomes embarrassed by these intimate conversations at such an early stage of our friendship. What could I tell her? That I am probably already too used to this kind of talk? That it has suddenly become unbearable to me to notsay everything, or at least practically everything, to a person who looks as if she might be able to understand, exactly?

  I don’t think my first enthusiasm was misplaced. Ariela is charming and clever (even though I can feel how she is a few years younger, and that weighs on me).

  I remember especially this, from our meeting: in a moment of total honesty she confessed that if her Gideon “cheated on her once or twice” with another woman, it would cause her terrible pain, but she would eventually get over it and stay with him. But if he fell in love with someone else, she would leave immediately (“In a moment!”). I flew off the handle—because of the unbearable pain that every disappointment, or feeling of being at odds with someone close to me, causes now … I told her that it was exactly the other way around with me: if I knew that Amos was only playing around with someone, it would be a serious reason for me not to respect him and not to want to live with him. But if he fell in love … to see such a living, beloved emotion in him would only make him more beautiful to my eyes.

  I saw, in her gaze, that she was distancing herself from me, her unripe eyes rose up for a moment. It was so hard for me to see. I grabbed herhand in a sudden panic. She got scared—Tell me, Miriam,
are you all right?

  I just found K.’s recipe for the possibility of perfect joy. Believe in the eternal thing in yourself, and do not aspire to it.

  Then again, this morning I can hardly believe in that which is eternal in me. I instead aspire, probably, to the finite thing outside myself that is quickly becoming destroyed.

  (As I was writing this, Nilly came up to me, and I decided to ask her as well. I said, “Nilly, do you think I will ever be happy? If so, move your left ear. And if not, the right.” And what did that cat do? She moved both of them!)

  Maybe she understood, long before I did, that you can never return from this place in peace. (Not just home—in general.)

  Amos is in Be’r Sheva. On a two-day teachers’ workshop. Oh, the pictures I’ve been developing in my mind over the last few hours as I’ve been circling the phone, hovering. I could make him come here in an instant (so I delude myself). I will make an appeal to his cheapness, pluck the one string that can always be roused to noise—I will whisper, “My husband is not home,” into the phone, as in some bad movie, and he won’t be able to resist the temptation.

  An hour of complete insanity passed. With all the excitement in the world, I walked through the house gathering a few bunches of paper balls that Yokhai has hidden in the corners. I prepared a little exhibition of them on the kitchen table. After that, I opened each and every one of them in the order I set. I ironed them flat with my hands—and crumpled them back again into little balls. Then I scattered them once again into the corners … There is undoubtedly something to it, squashing up paper in this way. Reason returns to me at midnight, with the prickles of needles, like blood rushing back into a hand that fell asleep.

  This morning’s lottery (again!) drew the last letter from Tel Aviv: “ … that you actually strike a spark from me to ignite yourself to life.”

  I’m reading it and am filled with despair. I don’t understand the tone of his complaint, this thrusting of guilt onto me; it makes me so happy each time someone, anyone, a pupil, a friend, Amos “takes a spark from me.

  Please, take it, I have so few takers.

  I want this—each time the green man on Mars gazes down at me, he will see how sparks fly, every time I interact and connect with another person.

  … And immediately, upon my first exit from the house after writing, “reality” responds: I sneezed hard by the traffic light at Ha-Mekasher Junction. A young man, tanned, with blond curls and a backpack, passed in front of me. He took a deep breath and laughed: “Even your germs, baby.”

  A stupid quarrel with A. It started with his suggestion that I take a vacation, to refresh myself. Maybe even go abroad. And I attacked him, screeched out that he probably doesn’t want me by his side right now, that he can hardly stand me in the condition I’ve been in. It was complete nonsense, it had no basis in reality, but I was already swept away on a tide of anger. I felt as if internal streams of poisons were breaking open inside me, my guts were burning … I said horrible things. As an impartial observer I listened to myself … I sounded as if I was reciting text from some cheap melodrama—Maybe he already has someone else, and if he wants to be with her, he should look for a better, less transparent excuse. His face sank in front of me, faded away; he tried to calm me down and looked so worried for me, scared—it tore my heart, and still I wasn’t able to stop. It was as if a burning, twisting spiral cord had been cut loose and scratched my insides; it was a crazy mix of pain and meaningless pleasure. Then I said something about him and Anna (something I had never thought before and will not write down now), and his face tightened as if I had slapped him. He left home, slamming the door, and came back just before dawn, after I had spent hours with my nightmares, seeing him in every possible place. I apologized and he forgave me. But how will he really be able to forgive and forget? The air in the house is constrainedly polite and burning. Yokhai, who witnessed it, sticks by Amos and refusesto let go of him; he considers me with a new kind of look, as if he finally understands, for the first time, what the story truly is.

  Another fit tonight. Probably because of the tension. This time he suddenly refused to swallow the Apenotin. He raged, and broke another window, and hurt his hand. Amos couldn’t stand it and went out for a walk. I struggled with him by myself for long minutes until I succeeded in calming him down (he really is a lot stronger than I am). While doing that, he again scraped open the scab on his forehead. I really don’t know how to keep him from doing that again and again, he takes such a terrible pleasure in scraping and rubbing his wounds, and it drives me crazy (also because I understand it so completely). Later, when I finally managed to get him to bed, he asked me with hand signs to tie him down, something we haven’t had to do for a long time now, months. Amos wasn’t there, so I decided to do it alone. Again, it was amazing to see how it immediately calmed him. I rubbed his feet and sang quietly to him until he fell asleep; so perhaps we renewed our pact with each other.

  I sank in front of the television, exhausted. I was so run-down, so empty, I thought that if a miracle didn’t happen in a few minutes, I would simply cease to exist. With no pain.

  A miracle happened, as usual. They broadcast another one of “my” programs, about the forgotten tribes that Amos suspects the BBC invents just for me. This time it was about a tribe living in the Sahara desert. Once a year they migrate to a new place to live, and they feast for a week and marry off the girls. Each girl chooses two men and spends her first night with them. One very pretty girl told the camera, “On this night I will become a woman.” For a few weeks she will have sexual relations with both of them, but after that, she will marry a third …

  They showed her after the first night, sitting with both her men, combing the hair of one of them—He laughed and told the other one, “You see? At night she loved you more, but now she loves me.”

  Nothing happened, but I felt that I was slowly returning from some dark place.

  Why, you can, during a complete life with someone (said Amos later, in the kitchen, after we made up), travel the whole spectrum of humanemotions, and I said, And animal ones as well. He closed his eyes and became silent with memories not from here, and I saw, flashing on his (already tired, already comfortable) face, what used to scare me in him, the mark of times and memories in which I have no part. This time, for some reason, it brought me joy, even relief, as if, for a moment, a polygon crystal filled with shadows had turned in front of me, and at the end of the turn again showed the well-known features; and it wasn’t fake, this is his face now; each facet, together, is also the sum of all his faces. I was filled with love for him in a way I haven’t felt for weeks. Love for him, because of him, himself, alone. I thought how lucky I was that I was no longer a young girl, and that he is no longer a young man; and thought how much I love his wrinkles.

  I’m eight or nine years old, in the apartment on 15 Nekhemya Street; folded up into my hiding place behind the “geyser” in the bathroom, my body clinging to the hot boiler as I whisper tragic love stories to myself that I used to invent (it bursts open inside me as I write—the smell of burning wood, the lavender bottle I found on the beach and kept back there, hidden with LifeAssets, the book that was my Bible; the way I used to search for my groom among the fallen soldiers of the Scrolls of Fire. My little round mirror, my treasure with the red velvet back, in front of which I would practice wild Hollywood kisses for hours, exemplary little girl that I was. I was also Eliki, and Marisol the Spanish singer—it’s been thirty years since I’ve thought of her, and just like that, she springs out of my little finger …).

  I am crouched there, behind the geyser; it was the only place in the house my mother couldn’t get into. I’m whispering a story to myself, completely focused on it, but I suddenly feel something—deep furrows are being plowed into my back: she is on tiptoe, she has sneaked in to listen to me (the smell of the bleach from her hands slaps me in the face). Then, as if I hadn’t noticed her, I begin raising my voice, speaking with elevated language, ornamented
and lofty. I excite myself without shame, so that she’ll understand and know exactly just how splendid and glamorous I am, so she will feel like a dry raisin in front of the harvest celebration that I am. So she knows that I will never be her.

  (It now becomes clear to me that more than once, when I was writing to Yair, perhaps more than I was willing to admit, I used to write for thatpair of eyes as well, that were always, always, snooping over my shoulder. Oh, the twisted temptation to once again feel how they are bulging open behind me in amazement, monstrous and shocked at what I am capable of …)

  Not now, though. In these pages I don’t feel them there at all.

  No one to the left of me, no one to the right. There are none behind me, none to my side.

  Over the last hour, the sky has begun to produce an unusual light within the usual twilight, almost European. I’ve been sitting here for even longer, hypnotized, absorbing the changing colors into my body. Only my writing hand is moving. Our kingfisher is simply going out of his mind with the beauty of it, diving again and again into the turquoise light, not to hunt for insects, or to impress a female kingfisher, either—only to add his own color to the picture. I suddenly know again that the world exists; it is beautiful, and even if I am not always completely available to appreciate its beauty, others can feel it, and soon I will be able to return to that, to fee

  Dear God