Be My Knife Read online

  On the right side, in the back, just under the bone that juts out. That is where you are, in my brain. I think it’s exactly on the opposite side, for you (oh, then how will we ever truly meet?). In the past few days, coming near that place has been accompanied by pain and so much anger toward you; but now, to my surprise (and certainly to my joy), I am touched by the same precious moment I had sitting with Amos on the balcony after receiving your last letter.

  Should I tell you more than I have?

  Should I give up on you then, on the possibility that we—Should I give up already?

  (Then who am I actually writing to here?)

  You will see, there will come a day when we will be old and wise, and all these wars will have passed between us. You will hold me close and say, “How clever you were in those days, when you didn’t give up, when you knew how to do the exact right thing, come to our meeting place and wait and wait, and stay there as long as I needed you.”

  Fine. I’m going to tell you. Here it is: It happened as we were busy with one of our house’s most annoying rituals—the preparation of our monthly tax report. You’re probably intimately acquainted with this particular burden of independence (because of your own business, right?). Amos has to report what he makes from private lectures; it’s always so little money for so much heartache, and I have to assist him, because he is completely helpless in the face of columns and charts. Whereas I am the high priestess of practicality …

  I really used to hate doing it. What am I? An accountant? And the complex calculations involved in finding a percentage of taxes from such minuscule income. But one time I discovered that there is something pleasant about it, too. It is another way to re-create and linger for one more moment on all kinds of little events, the highlights of family life: buying shoes in a larger size for Yokhai … dinner at a restaurant with a couple of friends … and also an unusual amount of money spent over recent months on envelopes and stamps …

  Amos asked me what was wrong as I was typing in the numbers. I couldn’t talk, simply because I was afraid that if I started, I would burst out into the kind of tears that rivers can’t wash away.

  My face burned. Amos saw it, of course. And we continued working in complete silence, and I pulled myself together in the meantime.

  We worked in silence together for almost half an hour, until we finished up; we saw how much we would have to pay them this month (it turned out to be quite a lot).

  We then moved to the balcony and sat down. It was dark; we didn’t turn on the light. Usually, Amos’s presence calms me down immediately, but I felt that he, too, was tense, somewhat alert … his tension wrapped around my body and, to tell you the truth, worried me a bit.

  And then he said, with complete simplicity, You’re in love, Miriam.

  And I said yes. Before I even knew what I was saying. Because the moment I heard that word, I felt such a motion inside me—

  That I have had no words to describe until now.

  I didn’t describe it well enough in my last letter. I’m beginning to think that I didn’t say enough; or maybe I said too much? Because I knew that a lot would depend on the way in which I told you about the conversation.

  Again, my usual fear of your “selective hearing,” and more than that, your collectivehearing.

  But my chorus, too, was also constantly buzzing—Where are you living? How long will you delude yourself? You still can’t grasp that he meant what he wrote? That he is truly, honestly incapable of defeating himself? You have corresponded for seven months with a person who gave you a false name—who knows what else he made up? No, truly, would you look at yourself: your husband had to discover for you that you had fallen in love with another man; you, yourself, couldn’t understand it on your own. And where were you for that life lesson?

  I’m uncomfortable. This is not how I wanted to meet you today.

  Can you believe it, though? I never, not even one time, told myself, in that way, with those simple words, that one word a savior (only now I begin to discover how binding it is?). And I gave this emotion so many words, too many words, too many words, and a lot of names. Mainly yours.

  So how is it possible that only when I heard it from Amos—

  The great fugue. Oh, really, how are you not even in the least bit cautious? What did you think would happen if you abandoned your peace of mind to the hands of this fugue on such a day? Well, it’s a bit much, even on regular days. And why do you listen to it now, again and again? It’s like a huge net being dropped over, twisting you up, and not allowing for any rest. This moment of unison, for example—for a moment, you could imagine you could rest on it a little, huh? You thought you could be happy, rejoicing, celebrating; you thought you would immediately start dancing, and here comes the cello, tearing out your guts.

  How did you come into my life, anyway? How is it that I was so unprotected? You didn’t even enter through a window; you found some tiny portal, barely a crack—and entered me this way, and pierced my heart.

  I bought a box of Time cigarettes this morning. I walked out of thevillage and smoked three, one right after another. I refused all through high school, even during the Ta’amon Café period, when everyone around me smoked. And now, at the age of forty … It’s horrible, how my lungs burn upward, flame living inside me and licking up the edges.

  Even more horrible how much the burning relieved me.

  “I mainly live in what I’m not.” When I read that, a shout almost escaped me: so do I! But I never dared to say it to myself in the same way, because, well, my life is more or less full of what I am (and I’ve even gotten used to what I’m missing). I am happy with my mate, and grateful for Yokhai, who time after time gives me joy and understanding I never would have come to any other way. I am surrounded by loving friends, my house is near a little forest, and I have as much music as I need, and my work. I love it, too. Look at the grandness of my list of “haves.” My have-list is full, full; you yourself once said that it is even overflowing—

  But the knowledge of what I don’t have has now suddenly become so active and demanding that it is hard to contain. It’s suddenly full of life—and what will become of it now? What will I do with it?

  How delightful it is to write when such things happen: the young couple, our neighbors to the right of us, just left. They brought me a huge bouquet and thanked me very much, because they finally had an idea of what to name her, the little cherry-lipped girl: Miriam.

  It never once crossed my mind to suggest that name to them. I am so happy. A beautiful girl named after me will be in the world; also, of course, because of the relief; my secret bargain with the rain.

  Nine-thirty p.m. What a mess. Where do I start? The floor is covered with paper and toys, pots and forks and pillows and clothes and chairs thrown and scattered everywhere. And hundreds of pieces of different puzzles that will take me God knows how long to sort out. I worked all afternoon on a Winnie-the-Pooh puzzle with him. At the age of two he could finish it in a few moments. By the time he was four it took an hour and a half. And today he spent the whole afternoon trying until, eventually, he worked himself into a rage. I understood him. One more minute,and then I will start putting the house back together. I need to relax, with music and writing. Tell me, how many times a day do you feel a prick in your heart when you think, I will never write to her about this moment? Not at this moment, either.

  About the child he was before the disease—this is another thing I told you very little about. I really couldn’t speak about it to anyone in the world, not even Amos—the happy child with such a quick mind, and what a sense of humor and charm—whom we lost over the course of a few weeks and months. He was such a verbal child, he had so many words at his disposal, and a complete library of books for kids his age. I would read him a story in the morning, and one at noon, and two or three more in the evening (and because of that putting him to bed would sometimes take two hours). We used to have such conversations, true heart-to-heart conversations. You ha
ve never seen a two-year-old with such an open, illuminated spirit. Somewhere we have a videotape taken at his two-year birthday party. I don’t dare watch it—on it, he is dancing and laughing and acting out the children’s book Raspberry Juicewith us. Not three months later, his illness was unleashed on his system in full force, and his language began to disappear. He lost word after word, and we watched it happen and couldn’t help him; we couldn’t, the doctors couldn’t. He would search for words like a person who is certain he placed something in his pocket and it was gone. This is the first time I have been capable of writing about it in this way; I can now remember it from this distance without dying from it. I used to sit with him and recite words for him. In the evening, he would remember them—and in the morning, no longer. And once, in a fit (my own), I sat for a whole night and crossed out the damned words that had betrayed him in each and every book of his.

  I remember that the few words remaining on the pages looked to me like people’s faces screaming in terror from their windows at night.

  When the words were gone, he still had five or six songs left, for a few months anyway. The songs were the last to go. Eventually, there was only one song left, the Lilac Song. Every word was erased from me as well. I called every kind of tree just—a tree. Every flower—flower. And when you told me about how your heart curdled when Ido learned how to say “light,” and in this way lost all his other lights, I thought I would have tobreak it off with you right then and there, because I would not be able to endure what you were awakening in me without even knowing what you were doing. Even your most innocent mistakes. I couldn’t break it off with you, of course: probably for the very same reason.

  I have told you so little. I mainly wanted to hear you, I was thirsty for you. I have tried to understand it, solve it, with all my strength; I have refused to accept the biting insult mocking me that from the moment I began to want you to listen to me, to really, truly hear my story, a story that has nothing to do with you—you disappeared.

  I would now write you the simplest, most elemental letter, essential and undoubtable, like a math formula or an aria by Mozart; an axiom about you and me, about the most fragile, beating, and painful places of yearning. But it is almost ten, and soon I won’t be here alone, and I don’t want to be seen by anybody else when I am so upset. Please, I am still trying to understand, in a reasonable fashion, what truly happened to you, how you are capable of separation after we reached such an intimacy. I don’t know what to think anymore. I sometimes think you are afraid or angry about my “telling” Amos something about you. How offensive it is to think that this is truly the reason. But maybe you think I “betrayed” you.

  I hope that you at least believe me about this: that the thought of exposing the content of our relationship to him did not cross my mind for a moment. You don’t suspect me of that, do you?

  But why do you think I couldn’t have told him that which excites me even now—that a man who didn’t know me saw something in me that touched his heart so deeply—

  And here I am, furious, again. I already swore to myself that I wouldn’t be. If you can’t at least understand this, we will never have a chance; I mean, if there is something in me that Amos loves, it is undoubtedly the same thing that made me accept your first offer! What Amos loves in me is what led me to write you back! This is the whole of it, what’s not to understand? He loves the exact same woman in me who replied to your first letter; it is that same woman who once accepted his offer as well, who accepts him again and again, and each time she discovers something in him new and even more beloved. What is there to love about me, if not her? And how can you even love me without wanting to see her flourish and bloom? She is the heart of my life.

  I actually shrunk for a moment at the thought that, without even reading this, you were smiling to yourself, even chuckling.

  You weren’t chuckling, were you? It’s impossible for someone to sneer this way, somewhere in the world at the same moment that Barbara Bonney is singing this motet. Listen, come, let’s rejoice with her, can you feel it? Every note this man has written feels as if it is strumming a nerve tuned only for him. You can dance it without even moving, or move as within a dream, like the two embryos in your dream.

  Don’t think, by the way, that I am completely immune to the other voices telling stories about you and about Amos; the winks behind my back, and the moans of all of the good souls who are so concerned, with their certainty that some essential screw is loose in my head, the screw bolted in them so tightly.

  My face is burning. Even my palms are blushing. I hope I have another moment alone, because I have to say it, finally, at least to myself (because I am also an address, can you hear me? I am the address, I am the address to which this letter is sent!).

  Still … I stopped for a moment. I went to wash my face, it was like putting a fire out with a thimbleful of water. I thought, as I stood in front of the mirror, how afraid I am to actually see you face-to-face. Because, before anything else, immediately, you will be exposed to the less beautiful things in me. I have, for instance, a white spot, not a large one, above my left eye, a little crescent. I don’t think you saw it from where you were standing. Why did you ask me, so long ago under the sprinklers, not to dye my hair? I already have so many gray hairs—my mother was already completely white at my age. I had meant to start dyeing it this year, and then your letter came. You know, I noticed that when I close my eyes in front of the mirror, I see you.

  My heart is going wild. Maybe because she is singing the Hallelujah right now. I haven’t told you, I’ve been having a little blood pressure problem lately (yes, it is my dignified age, of course, my too-real reality, my body’s bureaucracy, altogether at the same time). Dr. Shapira demands that I take pills to relax my heartbeats—but I refuse to give them up. If only you could put your hand on my heart now, you would make me so very happy.

  I will stop here and continue tomorrow.

  No! I won’t stop! Did you see that pitiful demonstration of my fear of being too heavy to contain? Of the child who is so certain she is terribly fat;she wasn’t at all fat, but tortured herself for years and years by sitting ramrod straight at the edge of her chair so no one would see the folds of flesh on her back.

  So what if I’m heavy? You’d promise to hold me.

  Yair, I never dared the way I dared with you. I never allowed myself such license, internal license, I mean, with no boundaries; and you know I have the most generous partner in the world, a man who tells me in countless ways, Just be you, yourself. Anything you like, Miriam, as long as you are you, yourself. But I never dared, not all the way, not to the places beyond my strength, and surely not the way I now know I want to feel. Perhaps I can’t really reach that place by myself with only my own strength to see it through. Perhaps someone like me, someone who needs someone else to bring her her happiness, no, not just her happiness, her most profound confirmation, will forever be

  (You see? The sentence is incomplete. But the verdict is already written here.)

  Because I am probably only capable of being in that place with another. Not alone.

  I suddenly remember that, from a very young age, ever since I read the Krilov fables as a teenager, I had an internal sketch of myself: I am that miser, dying of starvation on the box of coins they had given to his hands to protect; and it’s a lot worse for me, because those gold coins are mine!

  And I don’t want you to be a lightning rod for me. Why should you capture my lightning? Just the opposite. Are you listening? Come and tell me, Be light!

  It is a moment before the beginning of a new day. I have to add an apology. Not to you. I want to write here how ashamed I am for putting myself under such a strain as I wrote yesterday.

  Amos arrived at eleven, just as I was finishing up my last lines. Can you imagine how I looked at that moment? You could, unquestionably, “see it on me.” He asked me what was going on, if I was all right. I told him I was terribly shaken by something I was writing. He waited
another minute to see if I wanted to tell him what it was and, perhaps, towhom I was writing. I don’t doubt that he knew—and I said nothing. I didn’t see the need to share it with him. He didn’t ask, and went to take a shower. When he returned, I had already pulled myself together, more or less. We didn’t talk about it. We talked about other things. And Amos will wait, without impatience and without fear, for me, for the time when I will be able to talk to him. Do you understand? There is no daily, or hourly, duty or report between us, about the strength of our emotions and what direction they are blowing in. You don’t have to take flower bulbs out of the ground every moment to check what length their roots are today.

  You don’t understand, do you? You think that such peace is possible between us only because he must not truly love me, or love me enough, or that we no longer share true passion. Isn’t that what you think? That if he doesn’t immediately storm at me and take me apart to discover why I am isolating myself so suddenly and for whom, he probably doesn’t love me enough.

  But to me—this is love.

  The middle of the night. I got up and everything is spinning around me. I’m afraid of what I will write down here. It’s the rain, the first rain. He already decided in April that we will end it in the rain. Of course, the first rain, which I love so much, which he loves, too, perhaps—and this is why he chose it. I don’t even need to ask him to confirm it, I know. I’m so cold, all of a sudden, shivering … and all the times I wrote him so innocently telling him how I was waiting for that drink, thirsty for it, how it fills me with such a feeling of bounty and hope again every year, unites me with the sequence of life and time and renewal. I don’t have many unions like it …