Be My Knife

  I thought, That woman who is working for you perhaps is especially perceptive to women’s voices, even if she is a nice little Beit Ya’akov graduate.

  So I’m sitting at my table waiting for the doorbell to ring. I truly have no idea why I so suddenly dialed your number. It went against my every intention.

  Ten minutes now. What more do I have to tell you?

  Perhaps—that today, there was actually a stretch of more than twenty minutes when I didn’t think of you. That I didn’t hear a word that reminded me of you. That I told myself that perhaps healing from you would be a quick matter, like everything else associated with you.

  That in the middle of my morning class, my heart suddenly went out to you with such force that I could hardly continue speaking.

  Because in that moment I remembered how they used to call you “Yeery” and thought that the nickname doesn’t at all suit you; I thought of how many years you were called that, and it became so urgent for me to tell you that you shouldn’t allow anyone to call you that! Don’t put up with it! Not from anyone! There is too much emptiness, flimsiness, to the name that is so unlike you. Yeery, Yeery. It just doesn’t fit.

  (Meery)

  (Nobody ever called me that.)

  I am regretting calling so much. I thought I could hold myself back, but that strange, depressing matter of the rain not falling—it’s beyond my strength to bear. He is probably already riding to me. And what will I give him? What book? Because of Yokhai, all the books that are precious to me are packed up in the shed.

  I wish I knew how to fill this sudden silence.

  This isn’t anything like fall, is it? It’s a new season, dry, white and cold (yes, perhaps we should try chatting about the weather) … It truly isn’t a laughing matter; all the fields have dried up around the village, and someone in the grocery store told me that foxes and jackals have been coming out at night into the gardens to drink from the hoses. And yesterday a flock of storks (that had left two months ago!) reappeared here, as if they had gotten confused, returning during the wrong season. They hovered around the dry dam all day and seemed lost, tortured. I was horrified—the whole cycle of nature is falling apart. Perhaps they are waiting for us, for you and me; someone is stopping everything for us.

  He is riding toward me—I think I can even see him, between the trees and the bends in the road; I can see almost his entire trek from here on the balcony, can follow him as he comes to me from you. I’ll find a book in a minute and put this letter between the pages (I’ll write “Private and Personal” on it, don’t worry). How strange to think that right at this moment a person is driving from you to me. A thread.

  I dreamed about Yokhai last night, that he went back to talking. A week ago he successfully counted up to four in class, and we had a big celebration. I guess I let myself have this dream because of it: He and I are walking through a huge desert. There isn’t a living soul around us,and the sun beats down hard. He stumbles, and I take him in my arms, I see his lips have become dry and cracked, and he then lifts his head with one last effort and tells me, “You should know that I understood your every word the entire time. I wish to inform you that it was you who did not understand.”

  Listen: I’m wrapping up my cookbook for you. It isn’t any old cookbook. Anna wrote it by hand, for my thirtieth birthday (she worked on it all through her pregnancy). Three hundred and sixty-five recipes. Keep it. If you won’t have my soup, at least take the recipe.

  The doorbell is ringing. Ten minutes, on the dot.

  You really are on time. (Horrifying!)

  I think she can already recognize my voice—but what do I care?

  Are we agreed now? I come to you in words, and you, on a motorcycle?

  Again, I couldn’t hold myself back. This morning was so gray and windy. Amos brought home a huge pile of firewood; on my owl I discovered that I wrote in some moment of prescient clarity earlier this week, “Call chimney man.”

  On the radio they promised that it will come down in two days at the latest. The first rain. Their language became mine for the length of three words: the first rain.

  I at least had the presence of mind to prepare a small package beforehand, so I would have something to give the messenger. You’ll see for yourself.

  What about you? Why don’t you send a note with the messenger? Or simply come as a messenger yourself, for once? You will take off your helmet, and I will see that it is you and … you’ll see how simple it can be.

  What shall I tell you today?

  (The truth is, I already thought about what I would tell you, and fill these horrible minutes with.)

  I dreamed about you again last night. My nights are full of dreams now. We were together, in a tall building somewhere. I was close to you in the dream, I could see you and hear you beside me, but I couldn’t touch you.

  You were standing on top of the railing of the balcony (the word “balcony” recurs throughout the dream, again and again, like a song ofmourning, “balcony,” “balcony”); I suddenly see that you intend to jump, headfirst, onto the back terrace. I try to stop you, warning you that there is no water there. Even though I see everything happening in front of my eyes, you can’t hear my voice (or perhaps I am incapable of making a sound).

  You jump, headfirst, onto the terrace, and I hear you mumble to yourself, “I knew this is what was going to happen.”

  “I couldn’t stop him,” I tell myself, and my heart breaks.

  Your fall ends—and I see you lying on the ground, your body naked; you are lying on your side, and your head is swollen, probably from the collision. You don’t move, but I can hear you muttering to yourself over and over, “In spite of everything, I only broke a few teeth and have a mild concussion. That’s all.”

  I am relieved that you are alive, but the fact that I remained on the balcony, above you, causes me terrible pain and suffering (until now).

  And here he is, at the door. Perhaps this time?

  Twenty-four hours have passed. It seems as if I haven’t moved from my place. I mean, I did, I went through all the necessary motions. I fed others and dressed, I cooked and scheduled Yokhai’s bus pickups. I played hostess when a couple of our friends who live in America paid us a surprise visit on their vacation home; I was friendly and amusing. I cannot understand how I managed to get through such a show; and now, sitting down, the pen practically floats into my hand, and I feel that I haven’t stopped writing you for one moment of the whole day that has just passed. The day closed and opened, as if the outside world blinked … and I am still sitting in my rocking chair, waiting for Yokhai to come home from his treatment. Night falls, the rain stands still in the air, and I am writing to you. Sometimes I discover a page under my hand; but most of the time there is none.

  If only I could fall asleep now and wake on a day when it doesn’t hurt any longer. But I wake up night after night at three—exactly the hour you ran around me—and I cannot go back to sleep. Why? I have no baby to keep me awake at these hours.

  It is the baby in me who is keeping me from sleep (no, it is the woman in me).

  Strange how this spiritual mess translates into my body language. Butyou don’t deserve to hear about my body. I don’t think anyone has ever insulted it in this way, and I just can’t understand how it is that when I felt more womanly than I ever had in my life, you didn’t respond.

  Did you hear it, Yair? Just now on the five o’clock news—they just announced that it will start raining tomorrow morning!

  “We finally have good news,” said the newscaster, and my heart started beating insanely fast inside me. Instead of taking a pill, I quickly dialed your Rukhama (we’ve already become a little friendly, you see), and I asked her to send me someone, urgently, it’s an emergency.

  So this is it, isn’t it? Our last chance. The last words. The end of the story you began writing for us eight and something months ago. We didn’t even have a full pregnancy.

  My hands have started to shake; how many minutes
do I have left? Ten? Nine? Is anyone manning the guillotine—has the blade fallen yet?

  I didn’t even get a book ready. If only I could meet your eyes now, so I could see inside you and then tell you what I see.

  I see a man who is not a man. A boy who is not a boy. I see a man whose maturity and masculinity are only a scab that has hardened, sealing over a boy’s wound.

  You yourself once wrote it on an envelope: “Scabbing wind.” (You were still Wind then.) I remember thinking that the scab had hardened directly over the point that connects man and boy in you, a place that is not alive, and at the same time not dead.

  (He has yet to reach the curve into the forest, your biker. He’s a little slower than usual, I think. Perhaps he’s a new one. Very well. Let him drive slowly, slowly, delayed along the way … A large, heavy cloud is hanging above the forest.)

  From letter to letter I felt something growing in me, something within my strength to do, and it is inextricably connected to you. It wasn’t a coincidence that I was the woman you addressed, because with your sharp intuition, you grasped that I could melt this scab away, until the child, your enlightened twin, could be exposed. From there, perhaps you would be able to go back to being the man you are, the one you were meant to be. Who is this man? You will probably never allow me to discover him. I can only imagine him as everything together, man and boy, man and woman, alive and dead; a lot of things and people at the same time, without the violent, artificial separation you create in yourself.

  To me, you are the most yourself in that place where all your souls touch one another, mix and mingle, with no separation.

  When I met you there, I was instantly filled with you, my body and my soul spoke directly to you, above your words, which I didn’t always like; because it was there that you truly excited me, filled me with delight, hurt me and pitied me.

  When you allowed me, for those brief moments, to be there with you, I became aroused in a way I never had been by a man, yes, by a gever.

  Did you feel it? It’s happening. I suddenly got hot and cold at the same time, and can, in all my cells, truly feel you standing in front of me, so close, as if you were on the other side of my door.

  No, I will not delude myself.

  But it has been completely quiet outside for a few minutes now. Not a leaf moving. I am terrified to lift the pen off the page, I can feel your eyes hanging on my lips. What do you want me to say? What can I say that I haven’t said already? What is there left to say in words?

  There are steps outside, coming up the stairs to the balcony. Yair, if I have one wish left, I wish, I pray, I beg for all these thousands of words to now turn into a body.

  With love,

  Miriam

  Rain

  And on Thursday morning, when the clouds sank into the valley of Beit Zayit and practically sat down on the house, and the rain didn’t come, and didn’t come—on that morning, at exactly half past nine, he called

  I asked if it was she, if this was Miriam

  And I knew it was him, before he even opened his mouth. I heard him breathing heavily and almost couldn’t breathe myself

  Miriam, is it you?

  Yes, yes, it’s me, yes … and there was a very long silence, and our quick breaths, and I thought he could hear my heart beating

  Just a minute, what did I want to tell you

  And everything that was, and was not, between us. All these wild months started melting in my chest

  Listen, it’s not at all what you think

  I’m not thinking about anything. Who could think? His voice was thick. He sounded as if he had just emerged from the forest

  I just have to ask you something, something small

  And was wounded by the battle he had with himself before calling

  Are you home alone?

  Yes, I’m alone

  Look, this has nothing to do with—with that, with us, is that clear?

  What, with what remaining strength I had, I asked him, What are you telling me?

  It’s about Ido, about him, not us, not you and me, I mean, and I started to tell her what had happened that morning

  But wait, speak more slowly, please

  We’ve been having some problems with him lately

  Slow down, I can’t understand you when you talk like this, explain it to me again, what happened to Ido? The name of his child on my tongue

  He is outside

  What do you mean? Outside where?

  His voice lowered until he was almost growling. I could make out only fragments of what he was saying: earlier that morning, he and his wife had some kind of fight with the child

  He isn’t even five and a half, and stubborn as a mule

  I wonder who he got it from, I thought

  No, no, no! He is far more stubborn than I am, and certainly more so than my wife. He is stubborn in a way that is from another planet. She has a nice voice, not at all as I had imagined, it’s very young. And Maya—that’s my wife, Maya

  Yes, I know. His wife and his son and him

  Say, are you too busy, do you mind hearing this—

  Mind—a mind was something I did not have at that moment

  I mean, do you have the patience—

  Tell me everything

  You don’t need everything, the details aren’t important

  There he goes, blowing hot and cold in the same familiar way, it’s in his voice as well

  She pounces on every word of mine, there was still some breathing space in between the letters, and now she practically exhales on my every inhale

  It was silent between us for a moment, as if we were both completely exhausted by our short conversation

  Listen. I’ll keep things short. This morning he got dressed slowly again, just to drive us crazy, and Maya said she wouldn’t wait for him today, she has been late to work all week because of him

  He stuttered, breathing hard, and shot out a round of words that sounded completely irrelevant to me

  And we had decided earlier that if he would not get dressed on time this morning, she should simply go and leave him behind, and that way we could give him a little scare, a good dose of his own medicine

  My soul quickly expanded and went out to him, for the way in which he set himself up for defeat

  because I could be late to work today, Thursdays are the days for our weekly meetings

  At work? At the bookshop, the Book Bunk?

  Yes, yes, with books, I was annoyed to hear my name for my business from her mouth. Her familiarity with my life irritated the hell out of me, how she clearly enjoyed showing off, oh, she knows all the dirt on me, it was so female and flustered, where was the nobility I had associated with her, why did I call her anyway

  I pictured him at his office for a moment, between the thousands of books, surrounded by people coming to search for a book there; he is running around, quick, spreading out his enthusiasm, filling every pocket of air in the room

  At least once a day one person rises from the stacks of books and comes over to me; you should see the smile on his face when he shows me the book he has been searching for, for years; it’s almost always something he read as a child—I think it’s the only thing that can bring that kind of light into someone’s eyes. My private name for it is “Miriam’s Light,” that’s what I call it, tell her, no

  We were silent together

  Having several conversations with her at once, I wonder whether the phone company will charge for all of them

  We breathed together

  To make things short, do you hear me

  An unknown noise, it was the whispering sound of the cigarette he held in his mouth, he sucked on it, and it, as if it had a life of its own, kept breathing out a bit after he did

  We concluded that after he gives in, apologizes, and gets dressed, I will drive him to kindergarten; today we decided to really teach him a lesson

  His voice evened out for a moment, and immediately took distance from me; some noise interfered wi
th the connection, perhaps it was because of the heavy clouds

  We have some interference on the connection because I’m walking around the house with the cordless, I have to watch him—can you even hear me