"You?" He smiles calmly, deliberating with himself, maybe even enjoying how it unsettles her. Because there is that part of him, she senses, that can't resist the temptation to give someone a little pinch, and twist it around, supposedly in jest.
"Yes, me." She thrusts her chin out, prepared.
He walks around her for a few seconds with his hands behind his back, and she already regrets asking, afraid that something will be broken, but also childishly eager to see herself in his eyes. He takes his time, immersed, pulling her out of himself, and slowly he changes. She doesn't even understand exactly how and where, but she suddenly feels a chill, because he is different. His body rushes up from inside, fills up, rounds out. He lifts his head with a gesture she knows well and walks past her with suppleness, in her lioness stride. His toes are spread and they hug the floor, his face slowly takes on a complex and alarmingly precise expression, the face of the woman she is, with her smile, still innocent, offered generously, and with the permanent wrinkle of effort between her eyes, the wrinkle that is also the place where she shrinks inside, afraid that you can already see the rapid reduction, the hiding ruses, the ignorance, and here it is, revealed to all, everyone can see it, you can stop trying so hard.
Even so, despite everything, something about herself pleases her; she is definitely still alive, still bold and undefeated, with that walk, that flexibility. I would hit on me, she thinks, I'd give myself a look on the street. Even the strained, slightly frightened spot between her eyes, it too may disappear in time, when things get better. She applauds him and thanks him for presenting her to herself like that, mercilessly, even generously. "You're so talented," she says with wonder. "You could be an actor."
He recoils. "No, no, I'm gonna have that restaurant. And anyway, actors are fags."
"Really? Says who?"
"Everyone knows they are." He thinks for a minute. "The supervisors at school. And my dad."
"Oh yeah? And who else is a fag, according to your dad?"
"I dunno. Dancers, for sure."
"Who else?"
He smiles; wearing his father's character again, he spreads his feet and places his hands on his knees and leans forward as if crudely watching a soccer game. The slightly devious twinkle appears in his eyes. "Singers."
"And who else?" She also crouches down with her hands on her knees. "Who else?!"
"Lefties."
"And?"
"Hairdressers!"
She roars, laughing, her perfect white teeth sparkling. "And who else?"
"Waiters."
"And?"
"Noncombat soldiers! Professors! Ashkenazis! And Hapoel Tel-Aviv! And everyone is a fag!"
"So says your dad," she sums up, standing straight.
"So says my dad."
Silence.
"And what do you say?"
He slowly straightens up, flashing her a well-practiced, cartoon-ish smile. But it seems to her that in the depths of his eyes-perhaps just an illusion-she sees the flashing movement of a long, supple beast, slinking between dark trees, its lazy tail wrapped around a trunk for a minute, then pulled away and slowly disappearing.
"But who's looking out for us?" she asks on the second-to-last day, after interrogating him again so that she could be with him once more in that place of the air-and-birds game. "Who looks out for us poor human beings?"
He thinks for a long time, brooding and deliberating, but Nili knows he already has the answer-he's just deciding whether or not to let her in on it. "What looks out for people is. "
"The earth!" She jumps up, shooting her hand into the air like a good student.
He seems surprised. "Why the earth?"
"I thought. " She is embarrassed. "The air looks after its birds, and the sea …"
"With people"-he glances at her, inspecting, and she knows she's about to enter into another of his mazes-"with people it's something totally different. With people it's talking."
"Talking?" She swallows. She's not sure she understands him, but she definitely feels a warm, slender finger touching the depths of her being for an instant.
He hesitantly presents his thoughts to her. "Every day, it's like there's one word-"
"And if I say it-"
"Then you win!" His black eyes glow in front of hers; for a second he is open to her, and she sees inside, into his darkness, and a tiny spot of gold flickers there.
"But what? What do I win?"
"I dunno." He laughs softly, insolently, and walks around the room with his arms outstretched to the sides. "How should I know? Maybe you win the lottery? That kind of thing, perks."
Or fall in love, Nili sighs deep inside. "But tell me, who's the person who knows what the winning word is on a given day?"
She should have guessed his response: he smiles mysteriously and keeps flying around the room. She almost bursts out laughing at the ridiculous, arrogant importance he puts on. But he is also so exposed and transparent at this moment that her heart goes out to him. "Cheapskate! At least tell me what today's word is."
"No."
"Then just tell me if during the days we've been here I've ever said the right word."
He remains mute, lifting his arms up high, delighting in the suppleness of his limbs. "I can't tell you, it's against the rules. But if you happen to say it today, then this evening I'll be allowed to tell you that you said it."
They shake hands ceremoniously, and as they look into each other's eyes, his coal-black wades into her green. But he never told her before he left. Maybe he forgot, or maybe she really didn't say the word.
She smiles. "All that, all that whole last bit, I don't know where you came up with it. It's a thousand percent unlike him."
That's how she says it, and I close my eyes, not in pain, but as if I can't go on seeing from the outside. And I don't want to either, because I can almost feel him in me. It finally happens, out of the blue. And it was her negation, her absolute certainty of what was unlike him, that did it. For a moment I feel him hovering in front of me and existing independently and almost without any connection to me. And so for the first time he is suddenly with us in the room, more alive than he had been in all the words I had written, all the thoughts I had imagined and tortured myself with. Out of negation comes affirmation, just because she is so sure of what is a thousand percent unlike him. Eighteen years later, she still knows him with such confidence.
It used to be that just that thought could have shattered me, but now I stand outside my pain for an entire minute, not even caring whether the other things I had imagined weren't like him either, and I even manage not to ask her about the rest of it, about the Chinese restaurant, for example. I think that's unlike him too-so what? I just sit and delight in how much it doesn't hurt, and I am even capable of thinking that everything I'd written and imagined isn't like him. That he was an utterly different kid. A thousand percent. That he was a macho kid, loud and boisterous and wild, for example, or dumb and dense, or even sly and conniving-a bastard who abused her the way they all did. An array of princes and jokers in his image fans out like a pack of cards, and with wonderful peace of mind I close the circle segment and choose one card with my eyes shut, and that is him, my kid-
I dare to breathe in the place that even the writing hadn't opened up for me. It had been sewn up with iron wires, and he-the boy, the kid-is in front of me, alive and sharp, and then, unhurriedly, he changes his shape as in a dream, and now he is a young bird at night, emerging from the darkness into the light of my window, curiously drawn to the light, and we both look at each other through the glass and see each other, and the bird gets scared first and disappears again, and I am left with my longings, but it doesn't kill me now, I don't know why not, it just doesn't kill me anymore.