He chuckles sharply and smoothly. "Because of my dad, it gets on his nerves."
They keep working, an hour-long class and a fifteen-minute break, and when evening falls, they go on without stopping, instead diving into a long relaxation after their prolonged effort, lying beside each other on their mats, looking at the ceiling, hazing over a little together.
"And don't you get tired out?" asks Leora, who calls again at eleven that night, worried after their first conversation.
"Tired out? But I'm recharging the whole time! I'm full of energy, I don't even think I'll be able to fall asleep tonight."
Leora, the sandbag of this hot-air balloon for the past forty-seven years, squints her eyes suspiciously. "Now concentrate," she says, as she employs the deft movements of a sidewalk cardsharp to fold the dozens of freshly laundered socks and underwear-Dovik's and Ofer's and Ronnie's and Shachar's-"and try to explain to me, without using any Sanskrit or any cauliflower, what his story is."
"That's the thing-I have no idea." Nili spreads her fingers out helplessly. "But he just knows, he knows his body from inside. How can I explain it to you? It's like his spirit can easily reach any part of him …" Her voice trails off. "Cauliflower" was the name Leora had given, years ago, to all of Nili's "spiritual dealings," and even Nili herself had become resigned to it, with a forced sense of self-derision. "And what's interesting, Lilush, is that the strengthening poses-all those push-ups and sit-ups and all that stuff that guys usually do like crazy and mess up their backs for the rest of their lives? All that's not for him, and the truth is that he's really weak for a boy of his age. He's a real weakling"-as if he's deliberately let his body atrophy, a strange, chilling thought enters her mind-"but he has such flexibility, such flow, it's amazing, a kind of rejoicing of the body. I rarely find such a thing even in people who have been doing yoga for ten years." (There's that voice, Leora thinks, and feels a stinging sensation all over, that veiled voice.) "But it's not just the body with him, see? It's from a completely different place with him, it's as if he"-and she stops, and through all the mountains that separate them she gives Leora a look that she can aim only at her sister, a look that seems not to have matured even a day since the age of seven, the stubborn and rebellious look of a little girl who had a hand placed over her mouth so she'd finally stop talking nonsense, but her eyes are very bright, shooting sparks of words. Then suddenly, in complete opposition to the rules of the dance, she stops herself, and with a cunning that she's very proud of, she sighs. "You know what, never mind. Maybe it really is all in my head. Tell me, Lilush, how are the kids?"
I glance sideways at her and see a smile. A full smile. The old Nili. And at once I become filled with pathetic and irreparable pride. It's unclear to me exactly what I'm proud of. Of the fact that she thinks I've finally written a good piece? About inserting a little revenge against Leora on her behalf? I don't know. I only know that it's not really my pride, it's her pride in me, which is almost the real thing, and I quickly bury my secondhand pride deep down, as deep as possible, with the other emergency supplies I've never used. The shelves there are laden with sealed jars full of preserved pride (and joy, and enthusiasm, and the purpose of life, and various other delicacies), and she mustn't know of them, and I mustn't either. Maybe one day, I don't know, maybe after, or when it's easier. Meaning never.
With closed eyes, she immediately responds to my molecular changes. "What can I say, I never thought I'd have a writer daughter."
There is tenderness in her voice, and I am quick to pounce on her. Don't be a bitch, I command myself, let her have her moment of pride. But there is provincial, illiterate satisfaction in her voice. It seems to be rising and arching toward me, and a large fleshy tongue pokes around inside me, searching for a crack. And the flames of age fifteen, the grumble in my stomach that calls out immediately: Stop her now! It doesn't matter what she wants, stop whatever you can! Annihilate the greasy waves of high tide and longing with a look or a comment or a scornful silence! For a long moment I actually fight myself, using both hands to secure my soul as it arches and trembles in reaction to that voice, to the price it exacts, even during phone calls to London-yes, that far away-when in mid-sentence she would stop, focus inward, and apparently incapable of restraining herself, she would emerge with the pronouncement, like some gullible prophet, with that hearty, fluttering voice: "Sweetie pie, you're getting your period soon." I would lose my temper, scream at her to stop pushing her way into my soul and get the hell out of my womb, and besides, it's not even my day-and of course, an hour later, like clockwork.
"You know," I say to my complete surprise-and it's clear to me that what I courageously sealed off in one place has immediately started leaking from another-"you never said anything to me about that book of mine that came out, the one I wrote, the Troubled Tourist one."
She doesn't answer. I decide to leave it and move on. But what about the cigarettes, I ask myself, how do I get through this night without a cigarette? "I asked you to read it," I remind her, knowing exactly how I sound.
She beats me off, of course, pouting. "But I told you. Don't you remember I told you?"
I do. I don't. What difference does it make? Why am I picking on her?
"I tried, Rotem, twice even. I just didn't get it. I don't. What can I tell you. I'm too old for that putz-modernist style."
"That's not exactly it, but never mind now. Let's go on."
"I felt," she sighs, "I felt as if … as if you didn't want me to understand." Then she corrects herself: "As if you wanted me not to understand."
I laugh. "I wanted you not to-? But why would I …" I fall silent, amazed. What is she talking about anyway. In the blink of an eye we both inhale and swell up. All the sighs of the past in our sails. I remember that later on, soon, there is a sentence that describes a ridiculous and slightly distorted face of hers, a sock-puppet face, and I wonder whether I should skip it, save her from it now, and more than anything, I think of her reading my book, I see her struggling with it line after line, I see the wrinkle deepening between her eyes.
Once she looked like Simone Signoret. People would come up to her on the street and tell her that. Now her large bald head moves slowly on the pillow and turns to me. "Rotem, enough. You can't go backwards to fix things."
But a friend of mine who works at the Steimatsky's branch in Ri-shon told me that when the book came out, Nili would go into the store twice a day, stealthily, with her transparent slyness, and make sure two copies were on the display tables, so they'd stand out.
His snickering when he had said "It gets on my dad's nerves" had distressed her. It had made him sound like his father, with his splinters of malice and pettiness. And so, toward the end of the class, she asks him to stand across from her and stretch his arms out to the sides. "Really open up," she urges him, and lifts his arms higher, higher. "Imagine you're yawning with your armpits. Now close your eyes. Now smile."
His eyes shoot open. "What for?"
"I want you to smile. What do you care? Just so you'll see what a smile does to us inside."
"But how, just like that?"
"Yeah. What's the big deal? Even just the beginning of a smile. See what happens."
He looks at her worried, almost suspicious. "I can't do it just like that, without …"
They stare at each other for a moment, their looks casting about over each other and pulling back like strangers, and Nili thinks sometimes he's a bit thick. "Maybe think about something funny, like something funny that happened to you." Then she grows alarmed. "You have had at least one funny experience in your life, haven't you?"