Motti (6 page)

In the end they'll be together forever, Motti thinks while the lights of nighttime cars outline his shadow in the room, on the wall against which he's placed his left cheek, etc.

But this “forever,” what does it mean? Will they be together until the very end, that is, in the same moment close their eyes and take leave of the world? Maybe there will be a terminal disease. And it will attack Ariella. They'll fight it together, they'll spend all their savings, longing to draw out each remaining moment of life, just another week to hold hands, another month. And together they'll return in the end from the hospital, the diagnosis will be clear—from now on, only pain and suffering, but the end is known. Therefore they'll put on a disc of beautiful music, and together they'll get into bed and swallow a jar of pills, and nothing will ever get between Ariella and him again, they'll lay so close, and between them only the jar, only the fumes from the exhaust, only the plastic bag that will cover their faces. Perhaps they'll even smile in the end, fixing the other with a look overflowing with acceptance and beauty, each of them, deep in their hearts, hoping nevertheless to die first, so as not to live even a moment alone, so as not to see the eyes opposite theirs glaze over, the tongue hanging out. So as not to hear the last breath.

First Ariella will object. This is for certain. She'll say, I don't want you to die with me too. I want you to remain, to be filled with joy, to fall in love again, to remember or forget me, to do whatever is best for you. And he'll say, no. No. Years before you knew who I was at all, I thought about you. About our life together. I also thought about this moment. I decided long ago, you are my life, and without you I have nothing. Time and again they'll have this very conversation, different versions. And when she understands that there's no way to convince him, understands that there is no other possibility, that she can't dissuade him, she'll hold his hand tightly and smile a sad smile, maybe the two of them will cry, and then he'll go to the kitchen and make her an omelet like she loves, and she'll try to eat, but the nausea, the nausea. In the days after this she will be brave and courageous, never again will they travel silently to the oncology ward, they'll just finish, let's say, reading a few books they planned to read but hadn't gotten to, just finish accumulating enough pills, and that's all, off to bed.

And if he's the sick one, if his body is scanned magnetically in a search for some out of control, metastasizing intruder, if a forehead strap is wrapped around his head, packed with electrodes and conductive wires, adorning him like laurel leaves? They'll slide him inside like a conqueror, into the guts of the rattling machine. Two weeks after this, no more, already the funeral. And people will cry and people will restrain themselves, and people will say, oh, oh, such a good man he was, why was he taken oh why. And she'll stand among them with a secret hidden behind her expression. And before this the two of them will talk about everything, they'll talk all about his approaching death—not like us, who look away from others' coming deaths as though they were dog shit.

And if he dies before this in a car crash, God forbid, if he's cut apart and all his foul-smelling physiological secrets that were hidden until then behind his skin are spilled out, Ariella will be there to hold his hand while his pulse fades, his life running out with the beating of his treacherous heart, which until now was needed to live but now at last has revealed its true plan, to pump out all his blood, to push it out of his gaping wound so he'll cease, be done, so little Motti will die like this on the road, and from a distance the sound of sirens is heard, but he only barely hears it, and every second is already so precious, every second is like a rare piece of jewelry that Ariella will wear for the rest of her life, the few years that remain to her, and she'll grope those forlorn beads of memory when she rolls over in her bed at night. (Alone, he hopes. For at least a few years it will still only be her, and even afterward some wound will remain, a sliver of longing, a gaping biographical hole, some sorrow.)

Look at this, so many possibilities one can fabricate without committing to any actual story.

The body of the plot is full of holes like a fisherman's net or an old stocking, and as with the net, it gathers up, without discretion, miscellaneous thoughts and meaningless fantasies and so forth. But that's how we speak through the pages of a book, so why hide it? On the contrary. Apart from whatever glance God—if there is such a thing—might throw us from time to time, there isn't a lot of meaning to the things we do when we're all alone. The only acts that have any salient existence are those done in company. That being the case, I would even suggest we meet up for coffee or something, but ordinarily I'm not a particularly good conversationalist. Quite the opposite. Unremittingly quiet or else babbling on—not to mention that since quitting smoking I don't know what you're supposed to do with your hands when talking.

But a day later, when Motti returned from work, Ariella was waiting there on the stairs, drumming on her backpack and chewing gum.

My mom still isn't home, she said to him. Can I wait at your place?

I, I, Motti said, his heart pounding. I myself am not going inside, actually. I just dropped by…dropped by to…I have, I really have to go, I just dropped by.

He fled down the stairs as if wolves were nipping at his heels, and hid among the bushes in the backyard for perhaps an hour and a half, until her mom returned. Only then did he go up cautiously, quickly drink a glass of water, peek through the peephole to see that no one was standing in the stairwell, put Laika on her leash, and out together to walk the streets.

And so, has your opinion of him changed, now that it's been made perfectly clear that she's just a kid? It's important to remember that he still hasn't done a thing. Won't, either. Why, she's just a child, why, that's disgusting, the very thought of touching her like that disgusts him, no matter how much he wants to touch her when she grows up, when they're in love.

As proof, even if he was asked for whatever reason to describe her to someone, he wouldn't have any problem describing her quite well (indeed, he's observed her for hours, a minute here, a minute there, from the window or through the peephole in his front door), but he doesn't know how she smells, what smell she has, he's never gotten sufficiently close to her. Likewise, and this maybe even more important still, he would without any doubt skip over in his description the secondary sexual characteristics that are even now beginning to be hinted at by her body. He'd skip her ass, which will grow rounder in future, and he wouldn't even think about the first signs of her breasts, already showing. Also not about what there is between her legs, even though in his fantasies this keeps him very busy, because how can this be, how can a person have an opening that another person can enter?

And not only will he skip these descriptions. Also the thoughts.

And this even though he watches her for hours and wonders what she'll be like when she grows up.

Will she grow to be tall and skinny like a shoot? Skinny, skinny, another moment and the wind will carry her away, even though she walks so determinedly against it, walking up some street against the wind, lowering her head decisively. Her cheekbones will almost cut the flesh of her cheeks, they'll protrude that much, but they won't look harsh and cruel. Just the opposite. Delicate. With straight hair she'll walk like that, in a T-shirt a little too big for her, her eyes light green now, with a hint of honey, giving them depth. Forest green, those eyes, rich, you can just drown in them. Or the opposite, she'll almost be pudgy, sturdy, with round and heavy breasts, smiling. At night she'll rest her head on his chest and absentmindedly caress him as they watch the TV. And he in return, teasing her—just as she plays with his chest hair, so he plays with her breasts. Places a hand there and swings them back and forth (this isn't sexual, it's a lover's joke), and so they laugh together, her and him, a laugh of deep recognition. After they calm down, and the laughter subsides, he'll say to her, my love, I love you more than anything. I love your hands more than anything, your legs, your tummy, the lines of your face, your spleen, the toes on your feet, your nails, your eyelashes, this beauty mark, that beauty mark, and this one as well, your voice, the way you move, your fantasies, your beautiful thoughts, your pupils, your nostrils, the hairs in your nostrils (and she'll protest, I have absolutely no hairs in my nostrils!—he'll correct himself, the nonhairs in your nostrils, but the hairs in your ears I just adore! and she'll protest, and he'll continue), I love your neck more than anything, your cute ass, your shins, your knees, keep going? The back of your knees, elbows, shoulders, your boobs, your little belly button (she'll say, what, you don't love my, you know, vagina? and he'll say, I love it, just love it), your earlobes, the nape of your neck, behind your ears, your tongue, your teeth, your forehead, your cheeks, your gums. I love to see your hair more than anything. More than anything I love to see it shoot off your shoulders like little flames, like a bonfire. And she'll say in a sweet voice, what's burning? He'll say, my heart, dear, and laugh deeply, as though belittling the beautiful things that he himself just said.

And if fate—of all things—laughs at him, and they actually don't meet again when she's grown up, without even knowing, some door will close in him that was open only for her. This he's already mourned, in the very moment he thought of it: that with her he could be a man who he could never be without her. Not a better man, not necessarily, but nevertheless a different man, and if nothing out of all the things he's now thought up will ever be, then this man too will never come to be, and already now he mourns his ongoing departure (mourns the thoughts he won't think when she won't be there, the jokes that won't come to him, even the small acts of cruelty that in her presence are liable to break loose inside him and who knows where they'll blossom now, if at all).

And if I may, like officers in the army are so fond of doing, offer a personal example, I'll point out only the diamonds that glittered at me years ago, as a boy, on the way back from Friday night dinner at Grandma's. Giant diamonds and chandeliers sparkling that I spotted from a distance, on the ceiling of some wonderful house that you could see from the road for a moment, through the car window, and they stayed with me so many years, until two or three months ago I actually went there, to the actual place, to someone's Bar Mitzvah celebration. And instantly all of them, all the diamonds and such, transformed into neon lights (even though in my memory there still remains something of all the marvelous radiance, and this paragraph is proof).

And this, now, is the question: Is it possible to accuse Motti of clinging to his diamonds in this way? That he avoids (as a way of life, properly speaking) ever standing in the hall and looking upward, negating his memory, feeling some dim contempt for anyone who believes there are really diamonds like that in the world?

It's clear that Motti must be accused of something. And there is certainly something to accuse him of. The question is if it's this. Which is one of the central questions of this book, even if not one of the more interesting ones in it. We have to ask if the freedom he's suckling at is real, valid. And then, if there's anything we can learn from his behavior. Or is it just the opposite, is it that you actually need to get dirty in the world, to immerse yourself in the neon light of the actual, in disappointment, in trudging forward and then sprinting ahead all of a sudden, through doors slammed shut.

(And he's wrong, that much is clear. There's no comfort inside one's head. Not like there is in one body with another, in that warmth, in the touch.)

You've certainly already noticed that I haven't in any way emphasized the idea of Ariella's innocence, her actual childhood, her childish innocence, etc. Moreover: I almost haven't talked about her at all. About her personality, her likes and dislikes. She's here most of the time as a sort of tabula rasa, a potentiality upon which it's possible to hang anything. And it's this way not only for literary reasons, but also because I don't believe in innocence, that is, in discussions about it, that is, in those speaking about it. Maybe only Patti Smith. Or maybe not even her. If there's any innocence at all, it comes out of choice and hard work. And I don't say this to be a smart ass. Not at all. Only in order to be understood. Because anything else would be overblown. Really too much. Because storytelling itself, this craft, well, it's a very dubious enterprise. To sit and invent things that never were for others to sit and strain to believe in them for a moment, maybe to learn from them, maybe to get emotional. So it's hard for me to commit to a story. To this suspicious craft. To devote myself to it, to a single, closed plot, to its characters. If I may be allowed to say so (and certainly I may, this is my book), it's just like in life, in life too it's hard sometimes to devote oneself to something without reservation, to touch skin with our own skin, with everything that will be lost to us eventually, will be lost to us in death or even before. On the other hand (again, like in life, sorry), what's all this worth if we don't give in and hug and love and so on? There's something to be said for distancing ourselves, true, but the rewards are very bitter. And I already know how all this will end, how my characters will end up and the book as a whole (I even budgeted its word count). Hence these games of distancing and drawing near, again and again: with all due respect, I think it's up to my characters to make the effort and come closer to me. Then we'll see. In American movies they say this attitude also works with women. But American movies, you know.