"And you made me seem so angry," she says.
"It's a story," I remind her dryly, but I suddenly feel a pang, as if I'd missed something.
"When have you ever seen me angry like that?"
"It's just a story, Nili," I say, annoyed. In my mouth I already feel the saliva of a foreknown failure. And really, where did I come up with her anger there? That righteous indignation I stuck on her is so unlike her-
"And you mention Leora by name."
"I didn't change any real names. Not Leora's, not yours, not mine either."
She contemplates at length, slowly absorbing. "You're in the story too?"
My heavy heart tramples over a particularly fragile joint on the way to her. "Yes, I'm in the story too."
But now she surprises me. I think I see a shadow of a smile, almost a satisfied expression. "Go on."
She sobers up, of course, the second he's gone. Have you lost your mind? What exactly are you going to do? This is a child we're talking about. How old did he say? Sixteen at Passover. Meaning he's now fifteen and a half. That's just great. A year younger than Rotem, and you're only three times his age. Congratulations. She walks around the room nervously, gathering up mats, laying them down again, regretting, standing, staring off into a bubble of the moment. What does this have to do with yoga? She sighs, and her heart starts sliding down the familiar slope. What does this have to do with the vows you once swore to yourself, when you were standing in the light? She sits down on a plastic chair in the corner. A slight chill seeps into her stomach, the coldness of a liar finally caught. And anyway, what is all that rubbish about standing in the light? she jabs at herself. When exactly have you truly stood in the light? She straightens her back, spreads out her hands on her hips, and searches for calmness inside, an indentation, even a small hollow of relief, of momentary forgetfulness. But a thick-necked little animal leaps out of there and expertly sinks its teeth into her. And let's assume that there was a time when you stood there, in your light-well, that simply means you were casting a shadow on someone else, weren't you? Isn't that the defective logic of "standing in the light"? She gets up, walks around the room, leans her back against the wall. And something else stings her from within: Why did he come to her with this proposal? What did he sense about her? What do people sense about her from the outside? She pushes herself away from the wall, the poison of the stupid, random insult already spreading through her. How do these twisted things always stick to you? No matter how far you run and how much you try to hide from them, it won't do any good, the magnet is working. She finds herself standing opposite the little mirror over the sink, her intense green eyes shooting sparks back at herself. She furiously freshens up her short-cropped hair, looks to the side, then back, and looks sideways at her impressive nose, slightly broken at the base. You thought it was safe for you here, didn't you, with all these vacationing families, a Mecca of boredom. She closely examines her large, beautiful teeth and licks her lips and hides a smile and is taken aback: wait a minute, what do you think you're doing?
She flees to the window. She opens it, chokes, and slams it shut. Her yoga room is located directly above the parking lot for the tour buses, and when she complained recently about the exhaust fumes and the noise, the activities manager smiled at her-she's at least five rungs above her on the food chain-and said, "The choice is yours, sweetie." Four buses spit out another cycle. The new arrivals stand for a minute, stunned and slowed down by the heat, looking like groups of refugees beginning to digest their catastrophe. Only one boy, who got off barefoot, hops crazily from one foot to the other. She reads the signs: NETANYA MUNICIPALITY EMPLOYEES, DEAD SEA VACATION. The heat vapors blur the mountains behind the buses. This is it, this is the last time. She'll buy new glasses for Inbal and then to hell with the money. Her arms hug her body tightly, but even it, the pride and joy of her life, seems suddenly a little strange and heavy, and when she walks, it moves with her in the room as if enclosed in a thick frame with a gilded caption beneath that says: Woman's Body. Maybe she'll call Leora, she thinks at first, because the moment she says it to someone out loud-especially to Leora-everything will cool down and dissipate. But the boy, she perks up, he may already be on his way here. Just think what's going through his mind. And Leora-oh yes, she's a real authority on these matters-stuck with the same Dovik since age seventeen. She is suddenly struck with horror: What did he mean, "doesn't communicate"? Could he be retarded? Think, Nili, think quickly, this is no joke, and it's certainly no joke for him, it's life or death.
With that phrase in her mind she finally realizes she is afraid, and she stands for a moment, trapped. She, who really has done it all, in lands near and far, and who has gladly and generously taught beloved men and women, and several students too, how to excite their partners and when to hold back and how to drive someone wild. Even when she gave classes in hospitals, even in old-age homes, she would pour forth her experience with deliberation and faith, teaching them where to touch and how to caress and where only to flutter like eyelashes, because it would always keep them happy and fresh, always. But here, suddenly, something else entirely, and even if nothing happens-and it obviously won't, you fool-oh hell, what did I need this for.
"You're not taking any pity on me," she says when I stop to take a drink. But there is no complaint in her voice-quite the opposite.
"Should we stop?"
"No. The pillow."
I rearrange the pillow under her head. When I lean over her, it smothers me.
"I smell it too," she murmurs. "That's the way it always is at the end."
She would certainly know. She has accompanied so many men and women right up to the final gates. Taught them to say goodbye, to release their hold on life without anger or resentment. She was proud of this great talent of hers, her art.
"And the way you invent things. Where did you get such an imagination? Not from me, that's for sure."
I translate for myself: there's no resemblance, she means. No resemblance whatsoever to what went on there.
"And you know what else I remembered?" She laughs softly to herself. "While you were reading, I remembered how you used to make things up when you were little. You were such a fibber. "
When she says that, the shameful coil of dishonesty stretches out from the depths of my stomach to my tear ducts, and for a minute I delight in it, and think of Melanie, and how she is slowly but surely redeeming me, even from that.
"The bottom line is that I'm a person without a drop of imagination. That father of yours, too, I don't remember imagination being his strong suit."
Perhaps because of what she said before about lying, or just be-
cause of the unbearable contact that had been created inside me between her and Melanie, I pounce on her: "Did you ever think it might be something I didn't get from anyone? Maybe it happens to be something private of my own?"
"That really is what I think." She surprises me by circumventing the provocation, refusing to charge into our normal catfight. "I've been, you know, looking at you, since you came here the day before yesterday. I look at you and I think, That's it, I'm not in pain anymore, the birth is over."
"It's about time," I reply briskly. "Thirty-five years in the delivery room is certainly long enough." I stab at her some more and flash her a broad grin, but we both sense that I am suddenly talking like a character in a movie where the lip sync has gone wrong.
"The birth is over," she says.
She's different, I realize. She's different from the woman I knew, and not just because of the disease. There's something else about her, and I don't know what it is, and it annoys me and jolts my foot mercilessly.