Sometimes she felt like a mannequin on which he constantly piled more and more colorful outfits that only underscored her dryness, her diminution, her narrowness. But every time she told him, full of sorrow and a broken heart, a little of what she felt, he was deeply insulted, amazed at how little she knew herself and him, at how she could hurt the most beautiful thing he had ever had in his life.
Why does everything have to be so exaggerated with him? Why does everything have to have such force? she used to wonder. And then she’d feel ashamed, and she’d think of the girl who jumped out of his bed because he was too intimate for her. She also often felt that he had so much love and passion that he was invading her, raging inside her body and soul like an oversized carnivorous puppy, without even imagining how much it pained her and ripped her apart. At times he would look into her eyes so intently. There were no words to describe what was in his eyes at those moments. And it didn’t necessarily occur in times of passion. Usually it came after the passion. He would look at her with such exposed, piercing, almost mad love, and she would teasingly touch his nose, or giggle, or make a funny face, but it was as if he did not sense her embarrassment. His face would take on a strange expression, imploring her for something she did not understand, and for one long moment he would sink into her eyes without taking his look off hers, and he was like a massive, shadowy body drowning in dark liquid, and he would gradually disappear as he looked at her, and her eyes would slowly close and cover him inside them, sheltering from herself, too. She could no longer look, and yet she did, and she saw his gaze emptying to reveal something else, something skeletal and terrible, with no end. He would dive deep inside her, hold her tight against his body, clutch her until she almost choked in his grip, and every so often he shuddered powerfully as though he had absorbed something from her that he could not tolerate. She did not know what was there, what she’d given him, what she’d received.
“I couldn’t be with you,” she says simply.
The sun sets slowly, and the earth gives off a fresh, steaming scent of insides. Ora and Avram lie motionless in their nest on the field. Above them the sky mingles with the various evening blues. Take a hat and put two slips of paper in it. No, you don’t have to know what you’re drawing lots for. You’re allowed to guess, but do it silently. And quickly. Ora, they’re waiting for us, there’s a command car outside. Now pick one out. Did you do it? Which one? Are you sure?
Her face grows long in the shadows. She shuts her eyes. Which one did you pick? And which one did you want to pick? And which one did you really pick? Are you sure? Are you really sure?
“Listen, I just couldn’t breathe. You were too much for me.”
“How could it be too much?” Avram asks quietly. “What is too much when you love someone?”
“Adam and Ofer were so lazy, it took them forever to find girlfriends,” she tells Avram the next day, walking through Switzerland Forest. “They spent almost all their time with each other, always shared a room. They refused to be separated until finally, when Adam was about sixteen, we gave them separate rooms. We thought it was time.”
“Where did you put the rooms?”
Ora hears the flicker in his voice and tenses. “In … you know, downstairs, where the storage room was. That basement? Where your mother’s Singer sewing machine was?”
“So you partitioned the basement?”
“With drywall, yes. Nothing major.”
“Wasn’t it too crowded?”
“No, it came out nicely. Two rooms, kind of nooks. It was great for teenagers.”
“And a bathroom?”
“A small one, you know, with a tiny sink.”
“What about air?”
“We put two windows in. More like peepholes. Symbolic.”
“Yes,” he says thoughtfully. “Sure.”
When he’d finished all his treatments and surgeries and hospitalizations, Avram had decided he didn’t want to go back to his mother’s house in Tzur Hadassah. Not even to visit. Ilan and Ora, with help from Ora’s parents, and loans and a mortgage, bought the house from Avram. They made a point of buying it at a higher price than its real value—much higher, Ilan liked to stress
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