The next item on his gentlemanly agenda was to ask me about Hagar, and in the middle of an adorable story about how she sat up in her sleep with her eyes closed and said—I suddenly faltered, not knowing if I was trying to endear my daughter to her father, or using her to make me seem sweeter in his eyes. And then Alek, all attention, very carefully, leaned over and took the salt shaker out of my hand.
“Not like this,” he said, “no … not like this.” “Not like this—what?” I protested angrily. “To talk like this, to meet you like this, it’s not normal.” I could say that it was this sentence that broke me up, or the touch of his fingers on my cheek, or the almost voiceless murmur of “Noichka,” but in truth I had come to him defeated in advance, helpless to deny.
The next morning Alek came to me at home, held me patiently when I sobbed over his shoulder with clenched teeth, and came again later in the week, until a pattern of clandestine life was established, if it could be called a pattern at all. Sometimes we would meet every two or three days, sometimes weeks passed without my seeing him, and it also happened that he once disappeared for almost four months. I could never point to a reason for his comings and goings, and when we parted I usually didn’t know whether I was going to see him in two or three days or whether weeks would pass again.
What is there to say about the humiliations of being somebody’s mistress that hasn’t already been said? Actually, perhaps I do have something new to contribute: a kind of gradual recognition that, without any connection to Ute and “I have woman I live with now,” Noa Weber needs the underground. That the clandestine procedures of a humiliating secret protect me and my soul no less than they protect him and her, for I could not bear a stranger to see me naked with him, and almost every moment with him feels like nakedness.
Not for a moment did I fantasize that Alek would leave Ute and move in with me. Our meetings left me exhausted, prickly with a cold energy, unable to sleep. From the memory of our first year together I could imagine how staying with him for any length of time would devour
me, how there would be nothing left of me, no human image but Alek’s. And when Nira Woolf became part of my life, and my life began to take on an identity, and when I already had “talents” and “opinions” and “achievements” of my own, this awareness grew even stronger.
When Alek asked my permission to see Hagar I couldn’t deny him, let alone her. But this permission, which I didn’t give at once, cut me into pieces, because it obliged me to tell real lies.
And so I roped in as consultants Tami and Liora—the oldest student in the law faculty, who before starting to study law had completed a degree in social work—and even though I didn’t tell the truth in this consultation, I needed it. And despite the deception, it helped me.
Me: And you don’t think it will be too confusing for her? He’s not going to stay here forever.…
Tami: The idiot … what does he have to see her for in the first place? Just to satisfy his ego?
Me: Believe me I have no idea.
Liora: The problem is that he has the right, from the point of view of visiting rights I mean.
Me: As far as I know him, I don’t think that he’ll demand visiting rights.…
Tami: The idiot … the question is what’s right, what’s good for Hagar.
Liora: What’s right for Hagar is for her to meet him, even if nothing comes of it, and even if it’s a disappointment. Besides, it’s impossible
to know what will happen in the long term, with him, I mean, parental competence can change over the years. But even if nothing changes, in my opinion the best thing for her is to face up to reality, because in my eyes at least, the most harmful thing is to live in a fantasy.
Me: Perhaps you’re right, but up to now I haven’t noticed any fantasy on her part.
Liora: I hear what you’re saying, but what makes you think that she would tell you if there was one?
My mother was so horrified by the news that Alek was in the country and wanted to get to know her little darling that when she suddenly rose from her chair I thought that she was going to call my father abroad to get his friends or the secret service to take care of the problem. But she only went to take the milk out of the fridge and broached another subject: “Once he’s here already, why don’t you finally get divorced from him?” “Because I don’t want to go to court with him.” “You won’t have to go to court with him, Daddy will make an appointment for you with Nelkin.” “You don’t understand. The apartment is registered under his name, if we go to court we might be left without a roof over our heads.” “What are you talking about? What right does he have to throw you out of the house? Nobody in the state of Israel will throw you out of the house.” “Tell me, Mother, which of us is studying law?” My mother pursed her lips. “This is what happens when people make a laughing stock of the law,” she said with a resentment that I was surprised to discover she still nursed. “At least you’ve learned your lesson. It’s just a pity that the child has to pay the price.” And when she resumed her seat and saw my face she added: “All right, maybe it won’t be so terrible for her. Because what
can already happen? He’ll come, he’ll see her, and he’ll go. That man wouldn’t dare make trouble for us.”
Miriam realized at once that no salvation would be forthcoming from my father’s buddies, the secret service, or the attorney Zachary Nelkin, and took pity on our vulnerability in light of the traitor’s sudden invasion. “What does he want to confuse the little one for? Such a good little girl, she doesn’t deserve a yo-yo for a father … the main thing is that he doesn’t start mixing you up again.” As opposed to my parents, who firmly denied that love played any part in the story, Miriam saw me as the youthful victim of a harmful teenage love affair. I never mentioned the business of the exemption from military service to her, Miriam respects the IDF and those who serve in it, and I was afraid of losing her respect. “How could he mix me up?” I reassured her. “Believe me there’s no chance of that any longer.” And I averted my face from her gaze.
I stayed in bed with him until twelve o’clock—it was the summer vacation, the exams were over and only two of my private pupils were still coming, so I had far too much time on my hands—until after twelve o’clock I was with him, and then he left and returned at five to meet Hagar. I planned the protocol of the visit with Liora, who came to support me and remained sitting in the kitchen, and Alek—Alek fell in with everything I laid down. If I had refused to let him meet his daughter, too, he would have accepted that as well.
Hagar’s father nodded at Liora, almost bowed to her, and handed his daughter a gift which she did not hurry to open:
The Great Stories of the Ballet
. He was pale, he stood and waited for me to invite him to sit
down, he accepted my offer to stay and have “something cold” to drink, as agreed, and I noticed that he had shaved since noon. Hagar, aged four, seemed paralyzed, obedient and paralyzed, and she went out with him obediently for half an hour to eat date ice cream. I watched them from the window as they descended the stairs together. She didn’t take his hand, he didn’t try to take hers, only went down the stairs by her side with his head lowered, as if he were trying to make himself shorter. My sturdy daughter in a blue sleeveless dress … in the middle of the stairs she suddenly turned round and waved to me with a courage that broke my heart. I waved back to her, and then I collapsed onto the marble counter, pressing my ribs against it. I didn’t remember, at that moment I didn’t think about anything, but a week or two before he had fucked me on that counter. Never mind the counter, to hell with the counter, the counter’s not the point, the point is that you’re not supposed to fuck like that with the father of your daughter. Not with shouts smothered on a wet shoulder. Not with that kind of desperation, come to me, come, come, take me, take me to oblivion. Not with only you, nobody else but you in the world. And with more, more, fuck me more, fuck me out of my mind.
Not with her father. Not like that.
Am I the only one in the world who distinguishes between the husband and the father?
Once we’re on the subject of sex, this is the moment to say that something in this regard also changed when he returned. The change didn’t
happen immediately, it came about gradually, in a kind of theatrical building up of suspense; from the start it seemed to me that he had returned with sexual experience, with tricks he didn’t have before—he didn’t have them with me, anyway—but the sexual experience isn’t the point. New movements appeared, in both of us simultaneously, a kind of conscious, coordinated game whose purpose was conquest, mastery and surrender: pinning my arm above my shoulder to the wall, grabbing hold of my hair when I turn my face to the right or the left, pulling off my clothes in one sharp movement, slapping me lightly when I’m on top of him, making me turn my face from side to side, and stopping—always stopping—at the first sign of fear; stopping and waiting for the sign. Hints of violence, symbols of violence, never actual violence. Sometimes marks would appear on my skin hours later, but at the time I hardly felt pain. I loved the marks he left on me, and sometimes I would deliberately provoke him to leave them. They almost always disappeared before the next time. And it wasn’t always like that, of course, sometimes it was slow and gentle, too.
Me (in his arms, with him behind me on the mattress in the living room, for some reason we hardly ever sat in the living room): Tell me about Paris.
Alek (into my hair): Paris … Paris is the city of everybody’s dreams.
Me: “The city of everybody’s dreams” isn’t telling.
Alek: So what is telling?
Me: Taking me to one particular place in Paris.
Alek: To tell you about one place … not far from where I lived there is an old cemetery. Baudelaire’s grave is there and also the graves of all kinds of other famous people. Tourists like visiting there, once I went in
too when I was passing, they gave me a map … never mind … around this cemetery is high wall, and gate, and next to the gate is rusty iron bell, like a bell should be, quarter of an hour before closing a guard rings this bell. One evening, it was spring when the city is very lovely, two students I knew ignored the bell, and they stayed there on purpose to spend the night next to grave of Baudelaire. I have no idea what they did there, read poems, performed some ritual with candles, maybe without candles … no, they would have to have candles, those people … Both of them wrote terrible poetry, absolutely shocking, before, and they both continued writing terrible poetry afterwards, too. But if you ask me about Paris, it is a city with the grave of a great poet where trash poets can make a pilgrimage, and even if it’s funny, it’s still great thing.
Me (smiling): Just once I’d like to hear you say something that isn’t a paradox.
Alek (genuinely surprised): I speak in a paradox?
Me: Yes, always (at which point he did all kinds of things to me which I have no intention of describing, and which it makes me moan just to remember).
Alek (afterwards, into my face): That isn’t a paradox.
Me (mumbling): The greatest paradox possible.
Alek (meekly): You know. If you say so it must be true.…
I said that we were playing a game, and now that I think about it, it isn’t clear to me where I got my knowledge of the game from; where did the knowledge of the rules and the movements come from, then when I had not yet been exposed to any pornography, certainly not of that kind. My sexual education proceeded from
What Sex Are We?
to
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
and
Fear of Flying
, and none of them included
this material. When
Emanuelle
and
Last Tango in Paris
were playing in the cinemas I didn’t have time to go to the movies, and I never dared approach the plastic-covered magazines in Steimatzky’s Bookstore, so where did I get it from, and why does it seem to me that it was always there inside me? Inherent in the very nature of sexuality?
Nira Woolf fucks gladly, so do I more or less, sometimes, but when I come to the sexy parts in the plot I restrict myself to the cheerful before and the happy after, as if in obedience to Hollywood’s Hays Code. Not only because of the embarrassment of the language, and not only because of what-will-my-mother-think-when-she-reads-it, and how will Miriam react, but also and mainly because there is no way I can get around the terrible vulnerability of sex.
A friend of Hagar’s came to consult me once, a wild and quite disturbed girl, she spoke tensely about how her sister fucked boys. I’ve heard this expression from older women, too, and even though I have never used it in my writing, my readers will assume that this is precisely what Nira does: beds them and fucks them.… I myself have no doubt that this is what Nira does, only I’m damned if I understand exactly what she does, or how a woman can fuck.
It doesn’t matter who rolls onto whom, and who performs the movements, and who pushes whom away afterwards, nothing can change the fact that at a certain moment of this event you are utterly abandoned, vulnerable and abandoned. And it is the man who possesses you, and not you him.
Sometimes my vulnerability was such that I felt I was dying; that’s how I felt, as if my soul was departing my body, and in my perversity it was precisely to this that I gave myself up, to the vulnerability and the departing soul, and the ritual abandonment of the body.
Sometimes I thought: he no longer treats me like a child.
The strange thing is that parallel to these developments, to the addiction to vulnerability and sex, my sense of control in the time outside of it increased—control over myself, I mean—until it was no longer possible to see me as that “plain, timorous, dejected / and lovelorn maiden.” I polished my opinions until they gleamed, though failed to achieve clarity of mind. With the love and the far out sexual experiences I grew further and further from my mind, or my mind grew further from me, drawing out the distance to the edges of fear, which always disappeared with his touch.