And still I didn’t get up, not right away, because there were other things out there that I also needed to know.
I opened Google and ran a search. The globe spun in the upper right hand corner — as it turned I remembered that Hitler had called it “the challenge and the prize.” And when the earth stopped turning, the search results showed three hundred one thousand.
Three hundred one thousand links to Aaron Gotthilf, situated in virtual space and leading to — how many people all over the world? There were those who wrote the texts and those who posted them online, because the one who wrote wasn’t always the one who posted; and there were those who read and spread the word to others, and not only in writing but also by word of mouth.
An octopus that embraced the world, a world-wide web of tentacles spreading through space. Not one “First Person” but many. A body that multiplied itself.
On page number one the words “mistake” and “my mistake” were repeated: “‘My Mistake’—years after the publication of his controversial book about Hitler, Professor Gotthilf explains. .”; “Although Gotthilf admits that he made a mistake. .”; “Professor Gotthilf’s great mistake. .”; “There is no mistaking his new position. .”
I scrolled quickly through a few of the following links. Texts in English, French, German, and Italian, or maybe Spanish, a text by someone with an Indian name, Hitler, First Person; Hitler, First Person, the program of a conference at the University of San Jose, the bibliography of a course at the University of Michigan; a link to an article published in the New York Review of Books; another program of another conference; “Professor Gotthilf is the son of scholar Hannah Gotthilf, whose study of. .”; Hitler, First Person—I didn’t open any of these links, not yet. I’d had enough for now. The hours of typing and reading, conscious of my sleeping husband, pricking up my ears to listen for his movements, hurrying to close the browser whenever he got up to go to the bathroom — those pornographic nights came later. Because on the first night when I started tracking the cells multiplying on the web, on that night I actually felt the sense of satisfaction that comes from seeing clearly; I’d even say I felt almost calm. When I shut down the computer I didn’t send myself straight to bed. I went out into the inner courtyard and stood there without switching on the light until the cold climbed into my bones and cooled the fever of my satisfaction, increasing the sense of calm I had begun to feel. I picked a moist branch of sage and crushed the leaves to smell them, and with the smell of the sage and the penetrating cold my breath opened and a possibility of cleanliness appeared. I didn’t know where it would come from, what would bring it, and how it would clean everything. Nevertheless, for a few minutes “cleanliness” was there as something that might be possible.
Penetrated by cold and clear-sighted knowledge, I slipped into bed next to my husband, and in the dark I smelled the sage on my fingers until the scent faded.
— 10 -
We returned to a routine that became increasingly false, and whose falsities both of us in our weakness went out of our way to hide. My husband was incapable of listening. I didn’t have the words to explain. I don’t blame him or myself, because the spreading infection was stronger than both of us, and like a disease it had to be allowed to take its course until it reached its climax.
Oded was sucked back into the office, and from time to time he complained that he was sick of his work and sick of being at the beck and call of entrepreneurs and landowners. “You read, write, develop, and look at me — I can’t even read detective stories any more. Just look at the kind of characters I have to spend my days with. In the end I’ll bore you to tears.”
Like he used to in the period when we had just met, he spoke of “changing direction” and his wish “to do something completely different,” only now he was talking about taking early retirement, after which “I’ll finally be able to read something serious, or go and study something for the sake of my soul.”
A few days after we came back, he began to get up early in the morning and go for long runs. He complained of growing a paunch in America, that one hour with Yachin in his gym was enough for him to realize how he’d allowed his body to deteriorate, that if he only had the time he would’ve liked to go back to judo or even to get into some other martial art: “You probably don’t remember, but I was once pretty good at that stuff.” And in the meantime, until he retired, and until he finished with the mall-owners’ case, and until he became a street gang counselor and taught the boys judo, he set the alarm clock for 6 AM.
One evening when I popped out of the bathroom for a minute to get a towel, I passed the bedroom door and saw him standing naked in front of the mirror and examining his body in profile. My handsome husband pinched his belly like a woman, and I hurried away. Love covers a multitude of sins, but I wasn’t going to lend a hand to the cover-up any more.
A physical restlessness like Oded’s attacked me too. I didn’t go for runs, but apart from the stolen hours I spent with Not-man on Google, I had a hard time sitting still. And no occupation, no book I opened, succeeded in keeping me in one place. I gave up the car almost completely, and instead of driving I started to walk. A meeting on the Mount Scopus campus, an upholsterer’s in Talpioth, a dentist’s appointment on the south end of Hebron Road — I went everywhere on foot; speed-walking, but not for the sake of my health. I walked fast to dissipate the infectious itch that refused to go away and made my skin crawl. All it needed was the touch of a finger for all my thoughts to spill out of me like blood.
The winter was more rainy than usuaclass="underline" a blessing, people said, Lake Kinnereth is overflowing, it’s already past the upper red line. The ground water is brimming over. It rained a lot, and I didn’t even try to adapt my movements to the intervals in the rain. I simply left the house and started walking, breathing in the air of the Judean Hills together with the stench of exhaust and rotting vegetables in the market, breathing the same air as the First Person, sharing the same sweeping, sickening pardon with him.
My sister spoke in general terms about pictures she labored to banish from her mind, and the pictures she didn’t describe haunted me more than the ones I knew about, more than what I gathered during the days of our basement apartment.
At the age of eighteen I was too ignorant to picture things that were obvious, and in any case all I wanted then was to distance myself from the confused vortex of my sister’s imagination. But now, all the details she had been incapable of recounting, and everything I had avoided hearing, took on shape, and the shapes moved inside me and hurt like punishment and sent me on punishing walks all over the city.
I won’t describe the things I imagined then. My sister was raped, not me. I did not suffer her torture with her, and I won’t pander pictures of her body here like some pimp.
Regarding the pictures in which I myself played part, the picture that haunted me most frequently was the one after the first meeting, the one in which First Person kisses my hand. Raises the palm a little, bows his head, lingers for a second, and pecks my skin with his mouth like a clown. A clown making himself ridiculous to make others laugh, and in the meantime laughs at everybody else. Pecks and pierces and laughs.
On the surface, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, things went on as usual, at least in the beginning. I walked all over town, but my walks almost always had an ostensibly normal reason: a visit to the nursery to choose a new tree to plant, to replace the alder uprooting the fence. I returned empty-handed, since it was only once I was there that I realized I wouldn’t be able to carry the sapling back on foot, but at least I had gone to check it out, and this too was an activity with a purpose. I went to order new upholstery fabric for the armchair, and I went to a meeting at the Youth Center to discuss the neighborhood parking problems, which were growing increasingly severe. And I went to meet friends.