I can still see her terrified look. I think I somehow manage to tell her not to worry, but I'm already at the flamenco climax, just trying not to fall off my chair, not to fall, it keeps slipping out from under me, I don't have any hands to grab it with and keep my head from being thrown and my jaw hurts and I try to focus myself on having finally said it, gotten it out, given it to her, the gift I gave her, and someone is shouting and I'm not sure if it's me or her, and then the bitter taste spills into my mouth from both sides, and I know I'm over the climax, this time I was let off easy, just another minute or two, it's almost comical to see how my shoulders and arms are spread out in little sections in all directions. Now it's more like break dancing than flamenco. You can even hear my teeth, which means my jaw has unlocked, and this time somehow it's all shorter than usual, I'm already doing the finale, including a curtain call with a grunting crescendo-
Now it's quiet, and kind of pleasant. The warmth slowly returns to all my limbs, and there are pins and needles, but they are very soft, gently licking different spots. It's an almost humorous thing that the body does-not great humor, perhaps, but at least you can see it's trying. What's new here is that I don't really care that she saw it. It's as if I suddenly realize that she's already guessed I have these numbers in my repertoire anyway, and that I haven't been inactive since the convulsions, the blueness, the fits and vomiting of ages five and fifteen, and that during my foreign sojourns I have even enhanced my methods. I examine myself again and find that no, I am not troubled by realizing that she must have known long ago-not all the details perhaps, but the essence; she must know about the creative blackness inside. Who am I kidding? I try to guess what else she knows, and think she is extraordinarily wise for not having said anything to me about it, ever. And now a narcotic calm descends upon me, as it always does afterward. Here and there I release another graceful flutter forgotten in the cellars, but the worst is behind me, and I sit there exhausted, drenched in sweat, like jelly, incapable of opening my eyes because my eyelids weigh a ton. I laugh to myself about how everything turns around and is eventually restored to its natural order: she is the healthy one and I am the sick one. She is health and I am sickness. She reaches out and gently caresses my hand up and down repeatedly, twenty, a hundred times, so gently and quietly, and so right that it somehow reaches me through all the trembling fortifications inside.
After she does her favorite back-opening exercise on him, he says, "Now I'll do it for you."
"Are you sure? I'm heavy."
"It'll be fine."
"I'm much heavier than you are."
He's already standing with his back to her, spreading his arms. She comes and stands behind him, back to back. His hair touches hers. They interlace their arms. His warm skin is on hers.
"Slowly," she says. She's afraid he'll be humiliated if he can't lift her.
The two of them, in silent coordination, strengthen the grip of their arms. He inhales calmly. Steadies his feet. He seems so mature to her at this moment. She glances back at his watch. In the country he's living in today, she guesses, it's lunchtime now. She smiles to herself. It's nice for her to be there with him, without his knowledge, a stowaway in his secret travels. In mid-thought he bends over and her feet are lifted off the floor, and a delightful sensation, mingled with slight panic, spreads through her. She is still cautious, wanting to be sure he can take it. He turns out to be stronger than she thought. Sometimes in strengthening exercises, even the moderate ones, she can see the hems of his shorts trembling from the effort, and her heart goes out to him.
"Is it hard for you?"
"No."
"Tell me when it is."
In response, he leans over a little more, lifting her higher. She allows herself to relax her body. Closes her eyes. She is amazed at his ability to find their shared balance, and at how wise his back is. She decides to give him another thirty seconds, for his self-respect, but then the room slowly fills with a silence disturbed only by their softly intertwining breaths. Without realizing it, she has become completely relaxed, unable to resist goodness when it comes. Her back cracks and opens up, her internal organs slowly release from the grasp of consciousness, flowing to the sides. His breaths fill her up. They are effortless. Her lower jaw drops. She sighs softly, thoughts slowly waft up inside her, disconnected. Soon it will be good, she knows, precious memories, beloved images. She relaxes her body, making space for the pleasure, but as usual, a moment before it becomes good, and much like anyone sailing away or taking off, she must pass the customs officer and pay the tax: the oven has been broken for six months and there's no money for repairs, the antique fridge she bought from some Russian widow is making her life a misery: if she doesn't defrost it for a week she has the entire Siberian wilderness in her kitchen. And where is she going to find the money to pay the repairmen, those sons-of-bitches, and what should she straighten first, Eden's teeth or Inbal's lazy eye-she could have at least bequeathed them good teeth and eyes. And the daily phone calls from the bank, and the long-reaching arms of the landlord, who is willing to make all sorts of arrangements with her, but that's not it, she explains to herself for the thousandth time with a kind of false as-sertiveness, as if she just needs to tell it to herself rationally and then she'll somehow be able to unravel the thicket. The cutbacks are the thing, and the way poverty is breaking her up into small change, that's the thing, and her paralyzing fear that perhaps she no longer even has a life of the soul. "Worry about making sure I have a pair of underwear without holes first," Rotem jabs at her, and Nili groans. Rotem again, Rotem from every direction. Stop, please, I don't have the strength to carry her on my back anymore. Rotem with her principles and her cold, twisted rationalism, finding the most painful way to take her revenge on me, with her bodily destruction, thickening and bloating herself-when did this happen? When did she slip through my fingers like this? But now she's hazy already, finally, the tax is paid, relatively quickly. After all-she breathes a sigh of relief-there are some advantages to being like one of those Weeble toys. The thoughts descend, soon they'll disappear beneath words, the morphine of pleasure starts spreading through her veins, her breath becomes light as a feather. It's been years since she's been able to relax like this, in this pose. Her body is still and floating and entirely open. Underneath, somewhere down there, his back is supporting her, but without demanding a thing of her. He's there. She's here. They touch only at one tiny point, two people in the universe touching each other for a moment in goodness. You can go a whole lifetime without knowing this kind of touch. Usually you must go through a whole life in order to be able to give such a touch. She asks herself where he has this knowledge from. What age he has come to her from. She feels as if she is barely putting any weight on him. For a moment she can imagine them spinning around and around in the air, and now she is the one carrying him with that same ease. Silence. Breaths. Floating. Her soul fills, drop by drop, with the rare nectar of trust.