Illustration by Ruth Marten
I took a piece of paper from Moshe’s messy desk and made a list of winter clothes to buy:
Pair of corduroy trousers.
Two flannel shirts.
Undershirts—long sleeves.
Long underwear.
Wool socks.
And maybe new pajamas, too.All this for him. And for me:
Sweater.
Winter skirt.
Or maybe pants instead. Something not too expensive.
Warm stockings.
Flannel nightgown.
(And replace the wicks in the kerosene heaters and the light bulb that shows if the boiler is working or isn’t working.)
During breakfast, I said to him, 「Moshe, listen, the summer is over and in the end we didn’t take that organized tour to Spain, so instead maybe you could give me the three and a half thousand shekels to buy some things for winter.」 Moshe said, 「O.K., fine. But, listen, first I have something to tell you. It’s like this. During the factory outing to Netanya, a month ago—you remember—when you didn’t feel like going with me, I met this woman there, and afterward it turned out that we kept seeing each other, and now, well, I』ve decided to leave you, even though I’m very sorry about it. Honestly. But what can I do, Bracha? I just have no choice.」
And where was I that morning when they met for the first time at the factory outing in Netanya? As far as I remember, I was at the hairdresser. While Lucien was cutting off three-quarters of my curls, Moshe and that woman were sneaking out of the deputy director’s lecture and sitting next to each other in the lounge chairs on the terrace of the hotel in Netanya, where you can probably see the promenade, the sea, and the clouds. For every one of my curls that fell to the floor, they exchanged a smile or some knowing remark. By the time Lucien turned off my hair dryer, they were already in love. When I was paying and leaving, they were already holding hands. And my curls? A girl, Suzy, with purple lip gloss, who’s apprenticing with Lucien now and looks a little like some actress, swept them out to the sidewalk, so everybody stepped on them. Afterward, a sea breeze came along and blew them away, and where are they now? Probably blew across the border into Jordan. What foolishness, to go and get my hair cut and take off three-quarters of my curls. And on that very same morning.
The day after he told me that he just had no choice, I asked him, 「Moshe, maybe you could at least tell me what I did? What’s wrong with me?」 He got angry, but silently. He just picked up his fork and took out all his anger on the hard-boiled egg on his plate, until the white was mush and the yellow inside was flattened and striped from the fork. I kept my eyes on his plate the whole time, because I was afraid to look straight at him. But he didn’t say a thing. Maybe he didn’t hear me, or maybe he happened to be thinking about something else. Often he’s thinking of something else when people are talking to him. I don’t blame him for sometimes not hearing what I’m saying to him. Because he really does have a hard time at work. He has too much on his shoulders, and that Alfred keeps him on a short leash. I tried again: I said to him, 「Moshe, you owe me at least this much, at least tell me what I』ve done wrong.」 I lifted my eyes and saw that he was behind the Daily News, but he made the effort and put the paper down for a minute to answer me. 「Now, you see, that’s precisely the trouble with you—you』ll never learn to figure out for yourself when I’m busy and when I’m not in the mood and when not to bother me and to leave me alone in peace. And, besides that, Bracha, it’s not because of you—it’s because of her. How come you don’t get that?」
Now that I think about it calmly, I can see that I really should have picked a better time to talk to him about it. And, now that I think about it calmly, I also see that there were actually a lot of nights over the past month when he didn’t come home, or came home late, after I was already asleep. I didn’t pay attention to it. I thought, Maybe they』ve got a lot of shipments again, got some big order, and Alfred’s keeping him there half the night. When I phoned the factory a few times late at night and there was no answer, I didn’t think anything of that, either. I thought, Maybe he’s down on the shop floor or out at the loading dock, and has to stay there to supervise the night-shift shipments. I didn’t want to bother him. It’s best to leave him alone when he’s having problems at work, or pressure. I didn’t even think about it when three or four times the phone rang at home, and, when I』d pick it up right away and say hello, whoever was calling would hang up. I could at least have dialled *42 to see who it was, but it didn’t occur to me then. I wasn’t looking for signs. Only since he said to me, 「Bracha, I’m leaving you,」 since then all day long I can’t stop looking for signs. Even though, actually, where will it get me, looking for signs? What’s the point?
「Whoa, don’t ask constitutional questions you don’t want to know the answers to.」
Every morning, I have a sink full of dishes, some from the night before, too, and instead of washing them I have another cup of coffee, and another one, and sometimes another, until my heart starts to pound, and then I sit myself down at his desk and tear off a sheet of paper with the factory logo, and begin to plan what to make us for dinner and what to get at the supermarket and what not to get at the supermarket, better to buy at the greengrocer. As long as Moshe is still home, I cook for him. As long as he keeps most of his things here, I wash and iron. When his things aren’t here anymore, maybe I』ll take a little break from cooking. And ironing. A vacation. I』ll eat standing up, straight from the Frigidaire, and that’s it. Fewer dishes.
Anyway, in the morning I don’t feel much like doing anything. Except watching television: I get up, put on a robe, sit in the kitchen, and watch through the pass-through into the living room. Whatever is on—about Ninjas, about the leopards that used to live in the Judean Desert and have almost completely disappeared, about how people survive in earthquake zones, about rain forests and crocodiles in the land of Brazil. There was one program about two men, good friends from the Holocaust, Yossel the Painter and Yossel the Writer, and you could see them standing together in a room and sort of shoving each other, but not hard, the way friends do, you know? Or maybe they were putting on a show, pretending to be friends for the cameraman.
At about noon, I turn off the television, take off my robe, and go back to bed to sleep, and the dishes—well, they can wait, what’s the hurry?
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I didn’t remember at all that I』d made myself an omelette first thing in the morning, and I didn’t remember that I』d eaten it, but I remembered very well that a fried egg, the longer it sticks to the frying pan the harder it is to scrape off. And I remembered very well that if I stopped eating fried foods completely and started a diet . . . but there’s really no point. I’m a metre sixty-six and weigh sixty-six kilos, so I’m just right, according to the charts, and don’t need to lose weight. I don’t even know if my husband’s woman is thinner than me. Maybe she’s the opposite—full, sort of rounded—and if I had any sense I』d make an effort to fill out a bit so as not to have a figure like a broomstick.
In the end, I washed the dishes after all, in case he came home to get some more things and got angry at me for no reason.On the fridge there is a little bulletin board with a plastic covering and a special kind of pencil that you use to write whatever you have to do today, and afterward you lift the plastic and it erases everything and there’s no sign left, as though it had never been.
Tomatoes.
Carrots.
Rolls.
Cheeses.
And from now on we’re done with the playacting in bed.
Don’t need to wear that stiff brassiere with two holes in the cups for him anymore.
「Do to me like you did in Tiberias.」
「Today I want you to do the Chalice to me.」And I don’t have to pretend to come anymore.
Challah.
Eggs.
Instant coffee.
Garbage bags.
Soap for the dishwasher and detergent
for the washing machine.
Matches.In Sigalit’s advice column it says:
Age is in the mind. You are exactly as old as you feel.
A man before sex and a man right after are entirely different creatures.
The way to keep him from wandering is to be an entire harem for him. Sexual variety: every woman has it.
Exposé: Kitty Kensington reveals nine ways to stay mysterious. But, above all, remember that a relationship is first and foremost based on consideration and mutual respect.
Danish experts analyze the mystery of love: is it a form of selfishness, or a form of generosity, or both?
Exclusive: Pazit Linkowitz speaks out. Talks for the first time about the crisis in her relationship with Ziki Zentner: 「How I turned my frigidity into a lethal weapon in bed.」
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New research: Life begins when the kids leave home!
And I have to tell the boys and their wives what’s happened to us.
Why me? Let him tell them.But should I remind him to tell them? He』ll be annoyed with me if I remind him.
Baguettes.
Yogurts.
Frozen chicken.
Eggplants.
Potatoes.
Avocado.
Olives.
Diseases.
The grave.
I got dressed and went out to do some shopping and errands. It will be winter soon, and we still haven’t fixed the leak from the balcony window. Also, the technician needs to come to adjust the television, even though Moshe sort of fixed it on Purim, because on the cable channels there’s snow half the time. Who is she, this woman he found for himself on the factory outing in Netanya? How old is she? Is she married? Single? Maybe she’s a divorcée or a widow? With children or without? And what presents has he bought her already?
Now he』ll take her on the organized tour of Spain, instead of me. For two years, he’s been talking about Spain, Spain, but it never worked out. First, we enclosed the balcony, and last year we replaced the washing machine, instead of going to Spain.
Has he bought her clothes? For the winter? What did he buy? Where did he buy them? And what presents does she give him? Whatever you give him, he always says, 「Really? What for? For heaven’s sake, what do you think I’m going to do with this?」 And, in general, what does she get from him? With his belly and his flab and the hairs in his ears and the smell. He has a problem with his sweat glands. Because of that, and because of the smell from his mouth, I prefer that he do me from behind, with my face toward the mattress. Or that I sit on top of him, as far as possible from his mouth. What position does he do her in? How does she manage with the smell?
But what use is it to me to know if she has to wear a stiff brassiere with two holes in the cups in bed with him and pretend to come? Or if he says to her, 「Come do the Chalice to me」? And, really, it makes no difference to me what she looks like. Though ever since he made his announcement I』ve begun to look carefully at women. After all, she could be anyone over the age of sixteen and under the age of fifty, because he promised for my fiftieth birthday to take me on a second honeymoon to Spain, except that instead we closed in the balcony so he』d have a study.
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September 21, 2015
Maybe that’s her, the Russian cashier at the supermarket? Those Russian women really do have something very sexy about them; they give the impression that they』ve done it all and they』d do anything you ask in bed. Or maybe it’s that blonde standing over there, squeezing the vegetables, in a miniskirt? Or that one over there, with the big bosom? He would always turn his head to look at blondes in minis and at not-blondes in not-minis if they had a big bosom. And then he』d say to me, 「Really, what do you care, Bracha? So what if I turn my head? Barking dogs don’t bite, right?」
Maybe it’s the girl who stood right in front of me yesterday in line at the bank and kept turning around and looking at me? Or maybe it’s that tramp with the shorts and the high heels over there in front of the boutique, with half her bosom hanging out, trying to hail a taxicab? Or it may be someone that I actually know very well personally. Someone from the factory—Alfred’s fat secretary, or that bookkeeper who walks around in clothes fit for a young girl? It could even be, by chance, the very salesgirl in the boutique who’s lying to my face right now, saying that I look wonderful in these white jeans, even though we both know that she’s lying, that they’re too big for me, because she doesn’t have my size?
What a fool I am. With legs like mine I could also walk around in a mini. Even in shorts. Or maybe it’s Dahlia. After all, yesterday when I was leaving Maiman’s Deli I saw her from a distance waving at me strangely, and then she disappeared. Why did she run away from me? Or maybe she didn’t and it just seemed that way to me. I followed her into the middle of the street and called out to her, 「Dahlia, Dahlia,」 but not loud enough, or maybe I was loud enough, but couldn’t be heard because the cars began to honk at me from both directions, so I was stuck in the middle of the street, couldn’t cross and couldn’t go back to my side. In the end, I managed to get back to the sidewalk and even thought for a minute that I should phone her and ask her, 「Dahlia, what, did something happen?」 But instead I sat down there on a bench in the memorial park and started to comb my hair with a comb and a little mirror from my handbag. Combed for a very long time, though I have hardly any hair left after what Lucien did to me, and I have no one to blame but my own stupid self.
After all, it won’t be much help to me to know the truth, but I would like to know, anyway, if he loves her or if it’s all about sex, and if he still loves me a little bit, and if he ever loved me at all? At least in the very beginning? When he still called me sweetie pie? And if she also likes to squeeze his blackheads, and does he let her and not get annoyed at her? And, in general, what is it like when there’s genuine love? I』d like to see it once, just so I』d know.
If we’re talking about relationships, you could say that all in all I got from him thirty years of very good treatment, consideration, gifts here and there, and sometimes he would even pay me a nice compliment on my looks or my cooking or how I took care of things: 「You’re the best, Bracha. Bracha, today you’re tops.」 And, every time we argued, in the end we』d make up. Every trip he took abroad for the factory, he would always bring something back for me and the children. Mostly he』d bring me perfume—Poison, because he was afraid to pick out anything else by himself. His lover also has Poison; I smelled it on his clothes after he told me and, since then, I』ve stopped wearing perfume altogether, but his clothes still smell of it. I once read in Sigalit’s advice column that a man’s sexual attraction is driven primarily by the sense of smell. That Sigalit woman is totally wrong, because if that were truly the case, and if the lover and I wear exactly the same perfume, then why would he change women?
I sat for a while on the bench in the park commemorating the fallen Navy heroes and considered the question from all sides. Maybe Moshe gave her my perfume on purpose, so that I wouldn’t smell the scent of another woman on him and suspect something? Or maybe, by coincidence, she also wore Poison even before he started up with her? Maybe he didn’t start with her at all, and she was the one who started with him? Maybe when he said to me, 「Look, Bracha, I have no choice now,」 he meant to say that she was pregnant by him? Or, very simply, right at the beginning, Moshe told her that Poison was the perfume he liked best, and, as soon as she heard that, she rushed out and bought herself a bottle, because she had also read the article in that moron Sigalit’s column? That’s the only thing I would ask her if we were to meet someday. The rest doesn’t matter to me. And, come to think of it, that doesn’t really matter, either. It’s such a shame I got my hair cut this way. And on the very same morning.
Maybe he brought her home while I wasn’t there?
Once? Several times?
Did she inspect our family pictures on the sideboard first? Run her fingers over our wedding photo?
「I really liked that stuff you were saying about all of us being sinners and how we’re damned for eternity.」
And did Moshe undress her and lay her down on the sofa in the living room? On the rug? Or even in the bedroom on our bed? On top of the bedspread or first taking off the bedspread?
Did he ask her to do the Chalice to him? Did she do it? Was she repulsed?
Which of my towels did she use?
Did she use my toothpaste afterward? My hairbrush? My cotton balls? Did she take a little of the Poison that he brought me as a gift from Rome? Touch my skirts in the closet? Peek in my drawers? Inspect my underwear? Wonder about the brassiere with two holes?I sat a while longer on the bench, because I didn’t have anywhere to rush off to, and I needed for once to sit and think really hard about everything. Luckily, I had a little notebook in my handbag with the factory logo and pages that you can tear out and one of those little gold-colored pens that fits inside. I wrote:
Laundry.
Ironing.
Bring Moshe’s jacket to the dry cleaner.
On Friday, buy flowers for the living room for Shabbat—maybe people will come over.
Liquor: check what’s left in the bar.
Nuts.
Crackers.
Pretzel sticks.
Black olives.
Cheeses and those little tomatoes and all kinds of snacks.
Maybe ice cream also, two flavors.
And, in the winter, when it’s wet outside and everything is empty, you』ll sit at home night after night by yourself, watching the Shopping Channel, and you』ll hear only the rain pounding in the gutter.
Some fruit.
Paper napkins.
Good coffee.
Assorted candies.
Also, I need to call the technician so that the snow finally stops falling on us in the middle of the movie channels. And call Ilan’s Shirley and Yoav’s Orly, because the boys are both abroad on business, to tell them that we’re getting divorced. Yoav is coming back in a few days and Ilan will be away at least another month, but it’s a little hard for me to remember when they each left, and, in general, it’s a little hard for me now. And change the wicks in the kerosene heaters and the light that shows if the boiler is working or isn’t working.
Buy a toy for Yaniv and fix the leak from enclosing the balcony last winter and make two new keys for the mailbox, to replace the ones that got lost, so that the mailbox isn’t open all day and all night for our charming neighbors to look at all our bills and bank notices. And pay the maintenance already—Moshe keeps putting it off, and it’s beginning to be unpleasant. After all, it’s already October, nearly winter, and after that the Passover Seder—I need to plan the Seder meal and prepare everything tip-top, without any favors this time from Yoav’s snooty wife, and without any favors from the other one, either, that nasty wife of Ilan’s. This nice little notebook fell straight from heaven with its little gold pen.
And what’s so bad about being an undependent woman living alone in a house, without his yelling, without the weekend newspaper sections scattered all over the house every week, without drops of pee on the toilet seat, without his crumpled socks under the bed and under the easy chair, without doing the Chalice to him and then pretending that you』ve come because of it?
After a while, I got up from the bench, stood in front of the black boulder, and read one by one the names of all the fallen Navy heroes, so young, just children, really, and each one with a mother—what’s my tragedy compared with their tragedy? And I thought about the fact that some of them probably died before they had ever touched a woman and what a pity, because now, in my new situation as an undependent woman, why not, I could put on a little Poison and so on, no problem, and every so often take fallen heroes to bed, to make them feel good and me, too, in the time I have left before the diseases set in and the grave.
Afterward, I left the memorial park and wandered along the streets and looked a bit in the store windows, or, to be exact, I looked in the glass of the store windows to see how I looked. Sometimes I appeared short and square, and sometimes I was tall and thin, like a matchstick figure. With the money for the vacation to Spain we didn’t take last summer for my fiftieth birthday, I could have had a face-lift or a breast enhancement. You can have anything done these days. Or, for about the same amount, I could have gone to visit my good friend Behira, who’s been living in Geneva for the past twenty years. She’s very wealthy, and once she wrote me a letter to say that I was invited to visit her whenever I was in the area. She isn’t called Behira there; she’s Blanche, and her husband is a German engineer who is much younger than her. Behira, she was the first girl in our class at Heroes Hill Public School to buy a see-through lace bra and undies, which was a brand-new thing then, and they said that boys went crazy for them, but the girls also went a little crazy for them.
「God, I love the smell of sunblock in the morning.」
The street was filled with all sorts of women. Suddenly, I had an urge to know exactly what brassiere and undies each one had on underneath. There were some who walked down the street together in pairs and laughed out loud. And there were lots of blondes, mostly with bleached hair, and probably they wore micro-string bikini pants underneath. Black. I could easily dye my hair blond—who’s to stop me? Or buy underwear like that or see-through lacy lingerie, like Behira’s. So when Moshe asked me to go with him to the factory outing in Netanya, I should have just said yes and even bought sexy underwear for the trip and those stockings with lace trim and a miniskirt and dyed my hair blond. Moshe would have been completely crazy for me and wouldn’t have even thrown a glance in the direction of that woman. Instead, on that very same day, I went and let Lucien shear everything off. Such a fool. I slaughtered myself all by myself.
Instead of going to Lucien that morning for a garçon cut, I should just have gone to Sandra for a permanent. Now it’s too late. The wind here usually blows from west to east, so my curls have probably blown all the way to China by now. But why am I even sitting here and writing everything that happened on Moshe’s pad with the factory logo? Not for Moshe to read, God forbid. Certainly not for the children. Maybe it will turn out to be a long letter to my friend, my old classmate Behira? Except that no one has called her Behira for a while; she’s Blanche now, and for quite some time she has lived not in this country but in Geneva, with her husband, the German engineer, who is younger than her by a good many years. Greetings, Behira, dear Blanche. How are you, and how are things over there? Do you still remember our teacher Tzila Tzipkin, with the red boots? It must be thirty-five years since we saw each other, you and I, but no matter. You were almost always my best friend and you are still my best friend, so that’s why I’m sitting here and writing to you about all this tragedy that has befallen me. I wonder if these days you still wear those gorgeous undies and bras, with lace, sort of see-through? To hold on to your German engineer husband, so he doesn’t run off? Or maybe, just the opposite, you let him run off wherever he wants, because you already have a lover and you only wear the fancy bras and see-through pink undies with lace trim for him? If only I had your address in Geneva, we could start to correspond, just the two of us. Or has that husband of yours thrown you aside, too, since you are already my age, and, actually, weren’t you two months older than me?
All the way home I walked and looked only at women. I didn’t see any men in the street at all, or maybe the men had become transparent to me, like glass, except for the Navy heroes, who are already dead and lost. I took an especially close look at women who were wearing miniskirts or shorts, with or without pantyhose. I』ve never liked how women’s legs are thin below the knee and just above the knee get heavier and heavier. What’s sexy about that? Knees in general have always seemed really ugly to me, as though someone had taken two sticks and soldered them together and the solder didn’t turn out well, sort of rough and swollen. There were a few women on the street with a strong smell of perfume, and I started to follow them and tried to sniff—was it Poison? One girl even got annoyed and turned around and said, 「Excuse me, what exactly is your problem?」 And I answered her, 「Nothing. Nice to meet you. My name is Bracha and I’m getting divorced soon.」 It was the first time I』d said those words out loud, and when I heard them come out of my mouth I almost fell apart. It was only fear of embarrassment that held me together, because I couldn’t very well fall apart in front of total strangers and start crying in the middle of the street. So I held it in.
And, in the end, Behira, I went to Yaniv’s nursery school anyway, right on time, and took him to buy him a toy and, on the way, I told him that Grandpa was leaving me. Yaniv asked if it was because of him, because he was a bad boy at our house on Saturday afternoon? I said, 「How should I know because of what? Maybe it’s best if you ask Grandpa yourself, Yaniv. Call him up at work and promise him that you won’t have any tantrums or make a mess ever again. That you won’t fool around with his video machine anymore. Maybe that will touch him?」 Yaniv said, 「O.K., good,」 and put one finger on his heart and then touched me where my heart is. A girl in jeans sat on the bench in front of the post office with a little dog on her lap. Yaniv went over to pet the dog for a minute, and when we left he said that the dog had wanted to bite him. I said, 「Don’t be silly, the dog didn’t do anything to you,」 and Yaniv said, 「No, he didn’t actually bite, but he wanted to.」 I asked why he would say such a thing, how could he know what the dog wanted. And Yaniv began to pout and didn’t want to talk to me anymore.
作者：Amos Oz
譯者：Maggie Goldberg Bar-Tura
來源：紐約客（2015.09.14）
註：本文譯自希伯來語
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