Motti (5 page)

Got back home and watched the movie. Good movie. And then watched the credits, of course. And then sat a bit facing the screen. Then watched the news. Why, he too lives in this country. Harsh scenes shown, one must assume. The newscaster lowered his eyes and even spoke in a dramatic voice. Motti himself was upset, it's only natural. Someone needs to do something, it's truly necessary, but who and what, this is not entirely clear.

Yes, the world troubles him, make no mistake. The items on the news trouble him, the articles in the papers. The fighting voices that echo in the stairwell trouble him when Mickey and Sigal (neighbors of his, I swear it's them) start up again, and again the yells rise up and sometimes the sound of a smack, too, and then another sort of ambiguous groan, and crying. But what should he do, Motti—learn how to hit, buy a club and brass knuckles, wear a ski mask and go out into the night to take revenge? What is he, a little kid? Come what may, no brass knuckles will enter this book. Furthermore, even the most evil bastards, he knows, once had someone who loved them, who saw in them something beautiful. And if not, there's just one more reason to feel sorry for them. Maybe not to let them off the hook, to forgive, but certainly to feel sorry for them.

And anyway, what kind of stupidity is it to think we can simply cover our face and have no one recognize us! It's impossible to deceive dogs this way, for example, and this thought, of hiding and concealing and evading, it begins with our loyalty to the eye, to vision. We take from this a subtle pleasure—the spirit floats on waves of light as if we had no part in the vulgar matter! Only the eye has this quality (even hearing—from a physiological perspective, that is, as far as biological receptors are involved—is a type of touching). And so we turn our gaze away from the things that smell and the bristly hairs on the back of our hand, from our trembling and pulsing internal organs, and so we turn our faces away, turn our backs on our excretions, how vulgar. Again and again we encounter these things with almost pornographic wonder, the diluted insult that comes with being reminded of the corporeal creatures that we are, and a bit of fear in it too (excretions are emissaries of our inner body to the world of the eye—we are detectives always on the watch for fecal blood).

Since morning, because a strike had been announced, Motti wandered restlessly around his apartment. From time to time voices of children playing rose up from the street, and he, who had his fill of children each day at work, sat down to watch television but didn't find it interesting, decided to use the time to grade exams, but this didn't fill up more than a half hour, tried to read a book but the words got away from him. Thought it was noon already and decided to sit down to eat, maybe make an omelet, even though he wasn't hungry at all, but the clock on the oven instructed him that it wasn't even ten a.m. Didn't want to pick up the phone to call anyone, and in any case who did he have to talk to, everyone's at work, and who is this everyone after all, and in any case there wasn't anything pressing he had to say. Tried listening to records, but the old music annoyed him for being old, whereas the new music annoyed him for being unfamiliar. Twice called for the time, went to the video store and rented a movie, but didn't feel like actually watching it, and anyway who sits down to watch a movie in the middle of the day. When he thought to take Laika out again for a walk she just opened a sleepy eye at him and remained lying on the armchair in the living room. He always complains that he has no free time, and believes that if he had some he might finally sit down to do something substantive, something with meaning, learn to play an instrument or write a book, maybe start exercising, but who's he kidding (plus, why bother on the day of a strike? it might end tomorrow), he doesn't even feel like sorting the weekend newspapers, doesn't even feel like collecting them and throwing them in the garbage. They say that in the military prison there are inmates who sculpt chewed-up bread, how disgusting. It's possible to start sculpting with clay, with plaster, with papier-mâché, with processed leather, with bonsai trees, with aluminum foil, with mixed media, only all of his artistic experiments from the past (that is to say, from childhood) failed because he gave up. He knew that it was a mistake, and yet each time he expected that he would manage to create something utterly without blemish, something complete in itself—but again and again his hopes were dashed (and this is one of the many differences between us: I believe that a creation must bear the scars of its creation).

Whoever might see Motti wandering around like this in his apartment might think of a butterfly or an insect imprisoned in a transparent case: fluttering back and forth. But how can one escape from inside time? You should be ashamed of yourself, he reprimands himself. In Africa people search for food for their dying children, and you, since you have nothing to do with yourself, you complain.

One day, he says to himself, someone will come (he doesn't say
Ariella
, even though deep in his heart he believes that one day, if he only keeps himself strong, it will indeed be her) and remove you from yourself like a banana from its blackened peel.

Eventually he did convince Laika to go out for a walk. The two of them trudged on indifferently. Laika sniffed and he stared into space. Walked the length of the block, sometimes in the shade and sometimes in the sun, according to the caprice of municipal architects and landscapers. His thinking roamed to uninteresting places, and when they turned right on one of the streets he saw a woman from far away, walking ahead of him, for a moment his mind mocked him and he thought, here is the grown-up Ariella, and he hurried after her, loyal Laika following in his tracks, and she, who heard his steps from behind, even before he could consider placing a hand on her shoulder, a thing he wouldn't do, turned around smiling. Oh, excuse me, he said, I thought you were someone else. What a coincidence! she laughed. I really am someone else!

Another moment he stood there, maybe even with his mouth open. There are really great responses to that sentence, amazing comebacks, but they only show up after the fact. She smiled again, turned, and walked away. Motti and Laika also turned around and returned home. No one was waiting in the stairwell (and why would someone be waiting?), and the time was only three in the afternoon. Even though he wasn't hungry at all, he prepared a salad and a bit of rice with vegetables: a TV dinner. This was a very balanced meal, and he ate every last bite, albeit without appetite, almost out of obligation. Indeed, the body needs all sorts of things, carbohydrates and proteins and minerals and a soft touch now and then, and so forth, but the mind is like a child, it eats almost only sugar. This is a physiological fact.

Maybe, when they really get to know each other, Motti will discover that she's one of those cheerful women, always happy, but not out of ignorance or blindness, rather out of a good and proper view of the world, out of the hope—the belief—that we always have the ability to fix things, and that every day there is someone out there who is actually doing it, even though not everyone sees and these things aren't reported by the media. During the day she'll be in pants and a comfortable shirt, her hair either gathered up or loose, all over the place, she'll walk with a big bag and in it, let's say, cigarettes and a lighter and a telephone for calling him when she wants to hear his voice, and also a bag of food for stray dogs or street cats. She'll walk around and hum pleasant melodies as if absentminded, giving passersby a kind expression, everything she does she'll do out of casual happiness. Perhaps that's how she'll dress, and perhaps the contents of her bag will indeed be as imagined (cigarettes and food for dogs, etc.), but her mood, he'll discover once he gets to know her better, isn't quite as he presumed: she'll be a little morose and pensive, the evils of the world will weigh heavily on her until she can't bear it anymore, but she'll go on fighting for everything worth fighting for regardless. Almost to the point of exhaustion, every day. And only at night, when they'll rest in bed together, she'll suddenly let go. Motti, she'll say to him, my Mordechai, sometimes I think that only you give me the strength to carry on, and he'll say, nonsense, my beauty. I just…I'm not the issue here. It's all you, all of it.

But deep inside he'll smile and hope that it's nevertheless true.

And if that's how she'll be, maybe when they're together her hairstyle won't be as described above, but always smartly pulled back, to be let down only at home in the evening. Held tight in a rubber band, lest the world's stench get into in it. Everyone who meets her will say, Ariella is a tough woman. Good but tough as nails, you won't find a drop of gentleness in her. Only Motti will know the truth, that she has another side entirely, and it's kept just for him and no one else. Okay, okay, maybe it's not kept just for him, but only in his presence, when he holds her at night, is she free, does she let go, breathe deeply, laugh when he jokes tenderly.

Maybe she'll be, let's say, a social worker, deadly serious. She'll run some center for abused girls, she'll guide them with a firm hand, she'll give them exactly what they need, structure and clear rules, but if one of them breaks down sobbing, Ariella will hug and calm them down like no one else. A reinforced wall, that one. She won't let anyone harm the girls, not difficult parents, not boyfriends who are bad influences. And once every few weeks, maybe even every Friday evening, one of the girls will come over to Motti and Ariella's place. Their own foster child, a tough life she's had, and Ariella will make her into an artist or a concert pianist, and they'll collect newspaper clippings of deeply sympathetic reviews and in-depth interviews, and the foster child will say in them, I owe everything to that woman, her name is Ariella, she believed in me when no one else would. The girl will be like their daughter when she grows up, and if they move, withered, to an old-folks home on the edge of town, that girl (who will of course already be grown up by then) will come to visit with her family, because she won't be ungrateful, she'll know that one should never deny an obligation, and that debts must be repaid, and with love too, maybe even primarily with love. She also won't be ashamed of her past. She'll say to her spouse, to their children (maybe there will even be grandchildren), look, this is Ariella and this is Motti, without them none of this would have happened, and who knows what would have happened to me otherwise, maybe I'd be dead already if the two of them hadn't gotten me out the way they did. Her own children will already be pulling at her dress or her shirt or whatever she'll wear then (there's nothing to get mad about, they're children, their patience is short), and they'll ask to go home, and he and Ariella will walk the whole family to her car (if the two of them can still walk, aging is a cruel thing after all). Then they'll return to their room and he'll put the kettle on and hand in hand they'll sit down, let's say, to watch television.

And maybe, thinks Motti, maybe her hair won't be tied up like that in the first place. Maybe she'll have a long braid, a thick, smooth one that will rest lazily on her back. A dark braid that she'll nurture as long as the two of them are still relatively young. At night she'll brush her hair in long strokes, every morning he'll braid it for her beautifully. From time to time perhaps she'll be lazy, she'll keep the braid up and get into bed like that, to sleep, and if they make love then, he could, with the braid, c'mon, really, he could do what he could do. There are some things that we don't have to know.

He wanted their first time to be very special, and sometimes thought about a regular sort of special, a routine special, like satin sheets and flower petals that a woman from room service could scatter around for twenty shekels an hour, without benefits, without any employer contributions to her retirement fund.

Sometimes he thought otherwise. Thought about a special that would be truly unique, the two of them in a moment of passion in the stockroom of the houseware or clothing store that Ariella will maybe be working at one day (just a student job, only a temporary job, bigger things than this will still await her), and each thing that pokes one of them in the butt will be special, every strange contortion forced upon them by a surprising caprice of architecture, every sharp metal corner that scratches his or her bare leg (even a knock on the head from a ceiling that slopes downward toward the back wall).

And then, sometimes he thought about special in a car. The two of them will go on a vacation to the mountains, the two of them know what's coming and look forward to this first, exciting act of love, many more of which are to come, even that same night. And then, on the side of the road, the carburetor will die. The car will get stuck, but they won't call to get towed. They'll take out a thermos from the bag they packed in advance, sit on the side of the road and watch the passing cars. And talk about life. She'll say, it's funny how we were neighbors once, and I looked at you like that on the stairs, and he'll say, funny, right. And then he'll be quiet for a moment, and say, you know, I already had a feeling back then that one day we'd be together. She'll laugh. What, really? And he'll say, of course. She'll laugh again, and then she'll understand that he meant it seriously, she'll smile and hug him. So they'll sit another moment in silence, and then she'll tremble. Are you cold (he'll ask)? And she'll just nod. They'll get inside the car. And she, as if unintentionally, will reach her right hand out to his pants. And free him (his member, I mean) from there. His breath will immediately halt, and then he'll expel the air with a loud, heavy sigh. And she'll take off her pants, take off her underwear too, and sit down on him slowly. By the wandering glow of the lights on the car's ceiling, on its seats, on their bodies, on her face that will be raised up with eyes closed, on her hair that will be spread out like a curtain over his likewise closed eyes, on her breasts that will be freed from her shirt whose buttons will be undone, on his tongue, on the hands that will embrace, on the mouths that will open, the tongues that will reach places you couldn't fathom, the hungry fingers, the body rising and falling, the air that will escape through lips wide open, the moan, the moans, the moan.

Never had he come like that. Only that one time: as if a herd of horses were racing down his whole body, thundering the length of the arms and legs, a thousand manes wild in the wind, everything throbbing in his stomach and the tips of his fingers, and all the mighty horses galloping down the full length of his body as if he's a vast plain with grass that bends blithely in the wind, all of them galloping until they exit from him in a single, sustained rumble. And the breath is caught in his throat, almost shrieking. As if his soul is only barely kept inside. As if it had already started leaving, most of it already out, and only the tip of its tail caught on something, and then all of it gets pulled back inside again, a second wave of pleasure that will be almost too great to contain.

 

Or they'll arrive at the inn. Like an experienced, seasoned married couple they will unpack their bags, they'll place their folded clothes properly in the closets, put on water for coffee, consider what to eat that evening.

And they'll return excited from dinner, the two of them will already know what's about to happen for the first time. He'll wait in their shared bed and look at the light leaking from the milky glass of the bathroom window, what is she doing in there for so long, and then she'll come out in a nightgown that will spill like water over her body (which will be naked under it, I mean under the nightgown), and she'll get into bed. There will be absolute darkness, outside just crickets and a distant jackal, and like the jackal he too will only want to howl, to let out everything rising inside him after so many years of waiting. Her fingers will caress his face, afterward his chest, afterward further down than this. And then, when he can't get it up, she'll take it in her hand (I mean his sexual organ) like a baby chick and breathe on it to arouse him. Years he waited, it's understandable that now he's too excited. They'll lie in bed, and she'll smile at him that way for the first time, and his two hands will spread her legs which perhaps will still be a little chubby, behind her knees will be drops of warm perspiration, and then he'll enter her slowly and sweetly, and this is how they'll do it, she'll hug him and be happy even though maybe he'll finish too quickly, because what difference does it make, an entire lifetime of love still awaits them.

Will she scream when she comes? Will she only gasp for air? Maybe she'll just sigh with a voice so faint it will barely be heard, but he will listen, will know that he brought her this pleasure.