One morning, not long ago, I walked past this beggar, and all of a sudden, in a quite low, perfectly normal voice, he asked me to give him a few shekels. I stood still for a moment to ascertain that the voice was indeed coming from his throat. I had already become so accustomed to the terrible voice that it had ceased to frighten me, but that morning, when I dropped a few coins in his hand — his “thank you, ma’am” sounded quite natural and normal.
The bass voice was the same, but now it came from an ordinary human throat and not from a smoky sound box.
Something in reality had changed since the disappearance of Not-man. The ground had balanced out, or steadied a little. The air above the ground had lightened. The change was very subtle. Perhaps only beggars and raging madmen were able to sense it, perhaps it was mainly evident in them. But something real had changed, an actual shift had taken place — this I know with sober, clear-headed awareness.
I’m not crazy, and in this matter I am not subject to any delusions: the man we got rid of was not Hitler, and with the elimination of the First Person the world has not been redeemed of all evil. The world is not redeemed, this is clear to me, but it is no less clear to me that it has changed.
Those close to me, with the possible exception of Oded, apparently do not sense the change, and if they sometimes feel relief, they do not know what to attribute it to, or wonder what it stems from. People go out into the street, people walk in the streets and breathe cleaner air — so, what does it tell them? But it’s a fact, a palpable fact that the air is lighter.
Small, elusive things have changed their shape and conduct, and I myself, who have not been blessed with a scientific mind, can only rarely catch them and point to them.
The plants, not only in our own garden but also in the public parks, looked stronger and healthier than they have ever been. Our neighbor’s dog has stopped howling and wailing at night. Our sons are already grown, but I guess that fewer babies cry now for no defined reason.
Presumably some statistical study exists showing that asthmatics now suffer fewer attacks than before, or that the attacks are less severe. I expect I could find such a study on the Internet, but I’m sick of the Internet.
And I feel no desire to check it out.
In brief: the earth still cries out. Perhaps it always will. But now — of this I have no doubt because I have the evidence of my ears — it cries out less.
— 3 -
One infinitely sweet Sabbath. The fragrance of figs bursting with ripeness fills the inner courtyard of the house. Clouds filter the gold of the sun between the leaves of our grapevine pergola. A short while ago we returned from a visit to Oded’s parents, and now, relaxing in wicker chairs, he rolls himself a joint. Lately my husband has been smoking grass on weekday evenings too. He does this only rarely, and according to him he doesn’t smoke to calm down but in order to express the calmness inside him.
My husband pours me a glass of wine, and I hold the glass up to the sun while he rubs the cold bottle against my arm. In the past I sometimes considered having the tattoo surgically removed, but with time my doubts disappeared and today it’s clear to me that my tiger face is better than a scar.
The golden Sabbath time pervades our surroundings without reference points. A muezzin calls the faithful from inside the Old City, but he is calling to others, not to us. Oded slides the bottle lazily around my nipples. The lust is there, it’s palpable, but we have plenty of time.
•
When we came back from the desert we were not sexually aroused, that’s clear, and there was no trail of garments leading from the front door to the living room. Anything like that would have been inconceivable.
In the first days we simply treated each other gently, very gently, as if we were recovering from a long illness. Desire, when it existed, was also cautious, and only gradually, movement by movement, step by step, did it come into its own.
“Elisheva sends us regards from my father,” I tell my husband, because I have all the time in the world. “She says that if he feels well, he and his lady friend will come and visit them in the autumn. Gemma wants to paint the autumn leaves.”
Oded raises his eyebrows questioningly and keeps the bottle on my breasts.
“I asked her to give him our regards too. Why not, what do I care.”
“Right, who cares. I adore this dress. Is it new?”
I taste the wine, and before I dive into the glass my eyes seek to capture the scene and I take the photograph: a picture of a garden with me and my husband in it.
Photographed thus in my mind’s eye, I take a few more sips of wine, and only then slowly abandon my thoughts and yield to the primacy of the body. A sunlit redness gradually spreads through me, and when I close my eyes, I see the light through my eyelids, playing in our courtyard and giving rise to sparkling spots of color.
A motorcycle drives past in the alley and leaves a palpable silence in its wake. Close to me a bee buzzes, and a purple spot on the screen of my eyelids vibrates to the sound of the buzzing. Inside the house the phone rings, and we don’t bother to get up to answer it. Nimrod, apparently: wanting to let his father know that he’ll be late in returning his new Jeep to him.
Inside the Sabbath time there is space for everything. There is no early or late, now everything is permitted to me, and permitted too to others.
The skin on my arm tingles. I smell the joint going out and my husband asking “Should I pour you another glass?” I hear the vine growing. And the vibrating purple expands.
A wind, a light Northern wind carries the scent of rose from outside — in our garden there are no roses — and I see the wind and more: I see the points of the compass rose. In the East the desert, in the South the basement apartment — it must still be standing — in the West there was once a pension. Puffs of wind move the petals. The four petals of the compass flap like wings. The wings of the earth slowly rise and fall, and our garden is planted in the center. One of my bare feet is on the ground. The earth beneath me is firm and still. The garden will not move.
The purple tide rises and separates into shades, and the tide covers and the tide opens to see an infinity of purples opening out and spreading through space. The purple spreads and flows, an infinity of shades of purple, with a black eye at its center.
“Elinor? My love?”
A wind of words tickles my ear. Now a spark of gold beats in the heart of the eye. I close my eyes tighter, dive into the flickering blackness and make for the gold.
The Garden of Eden. A swooning Sabbath time with a ripe smell of fig and vine stretching immeasurably around us.
The Garden of Eden. The present is the only time.
The Garden of Eden. My body is present in itself and in the garden, and my body is the truth, and all of me in it is one: here I am, and from here there is no other.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Gail Hareven is the author of eleven novels, including The Confessions of Noa Weber, which won both the Sapir Prize for Literature and the Best Translated Book Award.
Dalya Bilu is the translator of A. B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, and many others.