About the Night (30 page)

Margo took off her new suit and hung it in the closet. She tugged on the arms and straightened the lapels; wrinkles in her closet were unacceptable. She stood in her pearly slip looking at herself in the mirror, and what she saw was a wonderful body from which only one body had emerged—and not the child she had wished for, not a sweet darling whose beauty everyone would coo over and compare to her mother’s, but a stoop-backed, stiff-legged, wild-haired child unsuited to piano playing or ballet who was no good at mathematics or physics and read too much and spent too much time alone and loved only her father.

The fetuses that formed in her body during the past years had not taken hold. They were ejected, rejected. Or perhaps—and this was too impossible to consider—she herself had expelled them. Something in the tissue that held them in place refused to accept them. Her gynecologist, who walked around in enormous shoes with raised insteps, could find no clinical explanation. He had told her that her womb was nice and healthy.

Every month she came in for a checkup, needing affirmation that everything was all right with her. In her flirtatious manner, she managed to hitch her doctor to her plans, making him particularly eager to help her carry a baby to term, while at the same time ascribing to him these repeated failures. After all, the golden hands of this fertility specialist had pulled thousands of strong, healthy babies from women less beautiful than she. So why couldn’t she, whose femininity turned men red and women green, produce a son?

She needed a baby, a son, a sweet, round child to love and be loved by in return, a son utterly joined to her soul for whom she would be the most important person in his life. She would be his entire world, and he would never disappoint her, as had other men she knew. He would resemble her, would have the white skin of her family, not the bronzed coloring of her husband. He would be cunning and clever like her, would be hers alone and dependent on her to live and breathe.

She stood looking at herself in profile and slid her hands along her waist and stomach. The fruit of her womb, she thought, was her heart’s desire, and as huge as her desire was, such was her feeling of failure as a person and as a woman.

Lila once dared to hint in one of their conversations that perhaps a phenomenon like repeated miscarriages stemmed from spiritual weakness or distress.

“What do you mean, spiritual?” Margo said, clearly hurt by Lila’s implication. “Do you think I miscarry because I feel like it? You listen to too much nonsense from your clients. Psychologists who don’t know a thing about life.”

Spiritually, Margo felt certain, there was no flaw or defect; she was more determined and decisive than anyone she knew. There were plenty of women more feeble than she, hesitant women she scorned for being born dependent and weak. Not like her, who made decisions and carried out her plans and made things happen in the blink of an eye. At her job in the hotel, for example, she boldly solved problems that everyone else was helpless to solve, using imagination and resourcefulness.

Still, Lila’s question continued to bother her, and as she stood in front of the mirror on the evening of Yom Kippur, there arose from the horizon, like the moon hidden behind a building suddenly revealing itself in full, something that seemed like an answer. She, Margo, was perfect in her femininity and her fertility, quite convinced that her décolleté had been the model for the goddess of beauty. She was strong and healthy, but a pregnancy required two.

So of course it was his fault.

Her babies were not taking hold in her hothouse of perfection due to Menash. They were as lacking in character as he, as flaccid nonentities as yolk dripping from an eggshell. As she slipped into a pink nightgown, she reckoned it was an experiment worth trying, without anyone ever knowing. And as happened with every brilliant idea of hers, Margo tortured herself with why she had not thought of it sooner.

Her husband was still on the balcony, leaning over the railing and watching the fasting passersby shrouded in the special holiday that demanded introspection. Instead of smoking, he looked around at the surrounding apartments, their lights dimmed, their kitchens silent, a rare background chorus of crickets and rustling branches and yowling cats.

Margo lay in bed making plans. Whenever she had a plan, she felt full of life, as if she was taking her fate in her hands and pointing it in the right direction. She was relying on the only person she could truly trust, the only one who would rescue her from distress, loneliness, or this temporary barrenness of the womb: herself. For as long as she could recall, she knew that if she wanted to attain something, she would have to find the way on her own.

But why look far and wide? She had made her choice: the father of her baby would be the man who still desired her after all these years. His wistful gaze kept an eye on her every movement; he drank in her words thirstily. It would not be difficult to seduce him; she would do it slowly and with cunning so that he would not feel he was a pawn in a game, an instrument for carrying out her scheme. He would inseminate her naïvely, with desire that would blind him.

Let him make an effort, she thought, already growing angry with him in her heart. She had only just selected him for the task, and here she was, steaming mad at him. Let him find them a place! Some doctor’s clinic, a pharmaceuticals rep’s storeroom, the apartment of a friend. Not in the car and not in the woods, not in haste and not where they could be caught. She would give it a few months, and she would pump him for semen on the appropriate days of her cycle, thus ensuring conception.

And suddenly she would have morning sickness, and she would be dizzy, and to spite everyone, especially those jealous, evil women, she would swell and she would sew herself maternity dresses and she would hold that baby tight in her womb, and he would be born full term, healthy, and plump. She would let no one near him; he would be hers alone, the fruit of her genius plan and a highly fertile and potent male. Nor would she have any trouble hiding that which needed secrecy. It would compensate her for everything she had been denied by her parents, her husband, and the blankness of her life.

“Are you already asleep?” her husband asked, disappointed.

She was practiced at this deception and managed to breathe like a person sleeping. She waited for him to fall asleep so that she could continue forming her plan without interruption. But he did not fall asleep.

Margo suspected this was because he could not smoke on Yom Kippur; his body was hungry for the portion of nicotine it received nightly. He moved about in their bed in a way that disturbed her. She counted and classified each movement of his, and the restlessness that often meant something that he wanted but she did not. Now she lay tense from head to toe, worried he might send out a probing hand followed by a chapped and roughened foot; then he might press himself against her reluctant backside while she would try to remove his entreaties from her body, bringing a cough to his throat that would rumble in her ear and annoy her, and this struggle between the two of them would continue under the blanket, this battle over proximity and touch and passion.

Sometimes rebuffing him was difficult, but this evening Margo whispered something about the prohibition on sex during the Yom Kippur holiday—as if they were a family of rabbis!—and he gave in and turned on his side. Rejected and repelled, he would fall into his nighttime sleep; in just a few moments she would hear that sound she hated, the heavy breathing that would rise to his nostrils and turn into a saw-like din, and Margo would wonder whether to shake him or let him be. If she awakened him, there was a chance he might start his probing all over again; if she let him snore, he would disrupt her thinking, and she would not be able to give herself over to the brilliant idea she had come up with while staring in the mirror.

In order to increase her chances of getting pregnant, she could not make do with plain old sex. She would have to arrange for meetings in which he would be aflame, bursting, and that his semen would spray inside her with the greatest determination and would impregnate her at once. She would have to bring him to a high level of anticipation and devotion so that their mating would be perfect, and he would explode inside her at the height of his potency. Time after time, without knowing a thing, Mano would inject her with his beautiful genes. If he did not provide them to her, then they would go to waste and be destroyed.

2006

The baker stood facing her with an open paper bag and a pair of tongs, poised and ready and pleasantly patient even though she could not make up her mind. Nomi pointed at a tray of puffy pistachio
financier
tea cakes and said, “And a few of those, too, and some of the flaky almond and semolina cookies as well.”

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Yes,” Nomi said, finding it difficult as always to pull herself away from such display cases. “A slice of that.”

“The
tarte tropézienne
is on the house for you today,” said the baker. “A little gift.” He built the
tarte
its own house of cardboard for carrying.

“Riani moved rooms,” she was told without asking as she passed the nurse’s station. A room with a balcony had opened up, and his roommate, Mr. Herschlag, had departed from the hospital without a word to anyone, his knapsack and walking stick in hand, just as he had promised.

Nomi hoped to find Elias on the balcony, but he was lying on his back, his eyes shut. Nomi bent down and kissed his face. “At this rate,” she said, “you’ll make it to the penthouse. How are you feeling?”

“Not so good,” he said.

“Weak? Tired? In pain? Depressed?”

He shook his head, negating the entire list. “Defeated,” he told her.

“Shall we drink some tea?” She lifted the thermos, which as always was somehow full.

He asked what she had in the bag, and Nomi thought this was a good sign. She knew that apathetic babies did not react to stimuli. She wanted him to eat and gain from the sweetened energy. He took bites from each kind of pastry and promised he would eat more later.

“Tell me something happy,” he said as if she had dropped in from another world.

“Outside, the almond trees are in bloom,” she said, hesitant at first, “in pink and white. It rained in the Negev, and that’s good for the grapes and olives down there. I bought a coat made of eco-leather, a new material meant to resemble leather.” She stood and modeled the coat for him.

“It’s a nice coat,” he said as she took it off. “Olive suits you.”

“You want me to continue?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said.

“At work I found a good home for a baby, I hope, the best available. An Ethiopian baby,” she said, “even though finding good homes for them can be tough. Israelis don’t want them. They prefer light-skinned Russian babies.”

“So how did it work with this baby?” Elias asked.

“This couple living on a moshav . . . he’s a farmer, and she teaches horseback riding. I could tell they were suited even before the suitability tests came through. Call it intuition. They’re people with values; they live nicely with nature. Before they came to my office I asked to have this Ethiopian baby brought in, as if by coincidence, so that I would look after it for a few minutes. I was holding him while they told me about the Lithuanian baby girl they hoped to adopt. And this little boy, like he had some natural instinct, understood that this was the audition of his life. He was as charming as could be, smiling and curious. The woman started making him laugh, but I didn’t want him to be too easy for them to have so after a few minutes I removed him from the room. A week later, she phoned and asked if a home had been found for him. They’re the kind of people who’ll be able to handle intrusive questions about why they’re light and he’s dark. I’m telling you all this even though I’m not allowed, because I know it makes you happy.”

“So don’t use any names,” Elias said, and asked to hear more.

“Next week,” she confided, “I’m going to visit him in his new home on the moshav, and for the coming months I’ll visit him once a week. Now let’s see, what else can I tell you?” she said, digging around in her memory. “Ah yes, my ex just had a baby girl. His third since we broke up.”

“Does it make you happy?” Elias asked slowly, as if braking before a sharp turn. “Or not?”

“It confuses me,” she said with a sigh. “There are moments that pinch me to remind me that I didn’t want kids with him. With him or with anyone else.”

“Bless him from deep down inside you,” Elias told her. “That will broaden your heart and open it up.” A few moments of silence passed before he asked, “Have you given thought to what I asked of you?”

She felt the disappointment rising, and her mood grew dark.

“This whole illness of mine,” Elias said, “it’s all because of missing her. If I could only describe to you what it was to love like that. People search for it their whole lives—they chase after every promise that will bring them love—while we, Lila and I, we had it, big and true, without even asking for it. And it stayed that way from the day I met her until today.”

Nomi swore to herself that she would not say a word.

“You people don’t understand what I’m talking about,” he said as if addressing a crowd. “At first it was longing, the need to be near her. A yearning. And then it grows stronger, and with it comes the knowledge that this is it; it’s part of us. It doesn’t come and go; it’s here for good.

“I look at my Lila,” he said, as though she were there in the room with them, “while we eat red rice. We enjoy its delicious flavors, and her eyes suckle my pleasure. She is the most beautiful woman of them all, but it’s not only her face, it’s everything that happens to me when I’m with her. I forget my name; I forget that I have children. I laugh aloud, from the belly. Next to her, I am young, I am manly, I am full of strength and gratitude.

“I miss moments from our present as they are taking place. She goes out to buy milk, and I wait for her to return as if she has been gone for a while. She is in the kitchen, and I follow her there just to look at the nape of her neck. She senses that I’m standing behind her, and I embrace her, turn her around to me, and dance with her while she has bits of mint clinging to her fingers. With her, I am the best dancer in the world, and our rhythms meet. We cook in the tiny kitchen like a chef with four arms. We watch a film and tremble at the same split second; we drive along and notice the little things at the side of the road. With her I see the invisible as well as the visible. It’s enough to have her at my side. We are one heart and one being. There’s no need to nourish it or maintain it. We are whole and perfect together, not in the sense of being blemish-free but like an old tree that has been there forever. People speak of happiness? Well, we got there and passed right through to the other side.”

Elias tried to sit up, and Nomi rose to rearrange the pillows behind his back. “You could try to claim that my memory is playing tricks on me,” he said, “but the color of our skin grew more similar, and so did our body scents. I would listen to her reading from the Bible, and her voice sounded like something I knew once a long time ago. When I am with her, I lose sense of time. When I am under the weather, I don’t become healthy until she ministers to me: the tea she prepares for me, the touch of her hand that renews my body. When both partners give, there is no limit. It is a religious experience, an uplifting of the soul.

“And,” he continued, “since we were a single body, we thought that nothing could harm us.” Elias stopped for a moment, pensive. “We talked about leaving here, but only together. And then suddenly she was taken from me, like a sheet ripped from a notebook that leaves behind another sheet no longer attached to anything. So here I am, only half-alive. The other half is dead. The doctors look at me and don’t understand where all the pains come from.”

Elias finished presenting his arguments, then let silence rule the room. Nomi did not budge; she was an audience of one who was all ears.

“Now go,” he said, “so that you can come back again.”

She embraced him.

At a sunny corner food stand, she ordered a chicken sandwich with lettuce, mustard, tomato, and avocado, and a cappuccino with foam that she scooped into her mouth with a spoon. Birds pecked at the crumbs from french fries left on a plate, and a particularly daring one stole a packet of sugar that he took to a nearby nest for a private binge. Nomi sat thinking about Elias; if that was what he wanted, then perhaps that was what had to happen. If he wished to be gathered to Lila, then why keep him here?

He had told her that his son lived in Riyadh—in fact he had received a letter from him quite recently describing a system of roads he had planned. They were as complicated as a heart’s ventricles, and they solved the major problems of congestion in the city. He explained that the traffic lights were perfectly coordinated so that jams were very nearly eliminated, and from a computer in his office he could track all their operations. Each month he sent his father a generous living allowance. Elias did not wish to visit him anymore, or perhaps was no longer able. But why couldn’t his son pay a visit and carry out his father’s last wish?

“I don’t think this is something to ask of a son,” Elias had told her in one of their conversations. “It needs to be someone who understands. Like you.”

She finished the meal with a bar of Cadbury’s with almonds and raisins.