He went inside and blinked on account of the green aquariumlike light that suffused the living room: a light that seemed to be filtered through jungle foliage or rising from the ocean depths. The beautiful Annemarie, with her back toward him, was leaning over the coffee table arranging photographs in a heavy album. As she leaned over, her fine shoulder blades stretched the skin, and she struck Yoel as less seductive than childishly touching. Clutching her gold-colored kimono to her chest with a thin hand, she turned toward him and exclaimed happily in English: "Wow, look who's here!" adding in Hebrew: "We were beginning to be afraid that you found us repulsive." At that moment Vermont thundered from the kitchen: "I bet you'd care for a drink!" and began to reel off the options.
"Sit down over here," Annemarie said gently. "Relax. Breathe deeply. You look so tired."
Yoel asked for a Dubonnet, not so much because he was drawn to the taste of the drink as because of the sound of the name. Which in Hebrew made him think of bears. Or perhaps because a tropical forest dripping with mist and water was growing on three of the room's walls. It was a series of outsize posters, or else wallpaper or painting. The forest was a dense one, with a muddy track winding among the tree trunks under the leafy canopy. On either side of the track grew dark bushes, and among the bushes there were mushrooms. Yoel associated the word "mushrooms" with truffles, even though he had no idea what truffles looked like, had never set eyes on one; all he knew about them was that the word "truffle" sounded to him like "tearful." The greenish watery light in the room was filtered through the forest foliage. It was a trick of lighting, intended to give the room a sense of softness and depth. Yoel said to himself that everything, the wallpaper covering three of the walls, and the effect of the light combining with it, was indicative of poor taste. Nevertheless, for some childish reason, he could not contain the emotion aroused in him by the sight of the wetness sparkling at the base of the conifers and oak trees, as though the forest were full of fireflies. And a hint of still waters, a stream, a brook, a rivulet, meandering with flashes of brilliance through the lush dense greenery, among shadowy plants that might have been blackberries or red currants, although what red currants and blackberries might be Yoel had not the faintest idea; even their names he knew only from books. But he found that the light in the room helped his tired eyes. It was here, this evening, that it finally became clear to him that the white-hot summer light might be one of the reasons for his aching eyes. In addition to his new reading glasses, he should buy some sunglasses too.
Vermont, freckled, ebullient, brimming with assertive hospitality, poured Yoel a Dubonnet, and Camparis for himself and his sister, muttering all the while something about the secret beauty of life and how brainless bastards waste and destroy the secret. In the background, Annemarie put on a record of Leonard Cohen songs. And they talked about the political situation, the future, the approaching winter, the difficulties of the Hebrew language, and the advantages and disadvantages of the supermarket in Ramat Lotan as against the rival establishment in the neighboring residential development. The brother declared in English that for some time now his sister had been saying that Yoel ought to be photographed and blown up into a poster to show the whole world the image of the sensual Israeli male. Then he asked Yoel if he didn't find Annemarie an attractive girl. Everybody found her attractive, and even he himself was enchanted by Annemarie; he guessed that Yoel was not indifferent to her charms either. Annemarie asked, What's all this, the beginning of a blue evening? Preparing the ground for an orgy? And she angered her brother by saying, as though revealing the most secret cards to Yoel, that Ralph was actually dying to marry her off. At least, one part of him was, while another part—but that's enough, we mustn't bore you. Yoel said:
"You're not boring me. Go on."
And, as though to please a little girl, he added:
"You really are very pretty." For some reason these words were easy to say in English, and impossible in Hebrew. In company, in the presence of friends and acquaintances, his wife had sometimes said to him in English, casually, with a laugh, "I love you." But it had been only rarely and always when they were alone and always in utter seriousness that the same words left her mouth in Hebrew. Yoel had shuddered to hear them.
Annemarie indicated the photographs that were still scattered all over the coffee table and that she had been busy arranging in an album when Yoel arrived on his surprise visit. These were her two daughters, Aglaia and Thalia, now aged nine and six respectively; she had had them by different husbands, and she had lost them both in Detroit, at an interval of seven years, in two divorce suits in which she had also lost all her possessions, "down to my last nightie." Then they had turned the two little girls against her, so that they could be made to come and see her only by force, and the last time, in Boston, the older girl had not let her so much as touch her, while the younger one had spat at her. Her two ex-husbands had ganged up against her; they had jointly hired a lawyer and plotted her ruin down to the last detail. Their scheme was to drive her to suicide or out of her mind. If it hadn't been for Ralph, who had literally saved her—but she must apologize for talking so much.
So saying, she stopped. Her chin was dropped at an angle on her chest and she wept without making a sound, looking like a bird with a broken neck. Ralph Vermont put his arm around her shoulders, and after a moment's hesitation Yoel, sitting to her left, made up his mind and took her little hand in his; he sat looking at her fingers without saying anything until her sobs began to subside. He, who for several years had not so much as touched his own daughter. And the boy in this picture here, the brother explained in English, taken on the beach in San Diego, that's Julian Aeneas Robert, my only son; I lost him too in a complicated divorce suit ten years ago in California. So my sister and I were left alone, and here we are. What would you like to tell us about your own life, Mr. Ravid? Yoel, if you don't object? Has your family also split up? I've heard tell that in Urdu there's a word that if you write it from right to left it means adoration, and if you write it from left to right it means loathing. Same letters, same syllables, just depends which way. For God's sake, don't feel you've got to repay one personal story with another. It's not a business deal, just an invitation to get it off your chest, as they say. There's a story about some old rabbi from Europe who said the soundest thing in the whole world is a broken heart. But you mustn't feel obligated to trade one story for another. Did you eat already? If not, there's some excellent veal pie left over that Annemarie can warm up in two shakes. Don't be shy. Eat. Then we'll have coffee and watch a good film on the VCR, just as we always promised you."
But what could he tell them about? His neighbor's guitar, that started playing like a cello at night after he died? So he said:
"Thank you both. I've already eaten." And he added: "I didn't mean to disturb you. Please forgive me for intruding like this without warning."
Ralph Vermont roared in English: "Nonsense! No trouble at all!" And Yoel asked himself why it is that other people's disasters always seem a little exaggerated or ridiculous, too complete to be taken seriously. Nevertheless he was sorry for Annemarie and her pink, overfed brother. As though replying belatedly to the previous question but one, he smiled and said: "I had a relative—he's dead now—he used to say that everybody has the same secrets. Whether it's really true or not I don't know, and I believe there's even a small logical fallacy there. Once you compare secrets, they stop being secrets, so they're ruled out by definition. But if you don't compare them, how can you know if they're the same or different? Never mind. Let's drop it."
Ralph Vermont said in English:
"It's goddam nonsense, with all due respect to your relative or whoever."
Yoel settled more comfortably in the armchair and stretched his legs out on the footrest. As though preparing himself for a deep and prolonged rest. The slim, childlike body of the woman sitting opposite him in a gold-colored kimono, with both hands repeatedly clutching its folds to her bosom, aroused in him images he preferred to thrust away. Her nipples squinted this way and that under the enfolding silk, and with every movement of her hand they trembled as though they were burrowing underneath the kimono, as though they were kittens wriggling and struggling to get out. He imagined his own broad, ugly hands roughly clasping those breasts and putting an end to their convulsions, like catching warm chicks. The stiffening of his member troubled him and even hurt him, since Annemarie did not take her eyes off him and he was unable to reach down unobtrusively and ease the pressure of his tight jeans on his erection, which was trapped at an angle. He imagined he noticed the shadow of a smile between brother and sister when he attempted to raise his knees. And he almost joined them in smiling, except that he was not certain if he had really noticed or only imagined what had passed between them. For a moment he felt rising within him the old complaint that Shealtiel Lublin used to voice against the tyranny of the sexual organ, which pushes you around and complicates your whole life, and doesn't let you concentrate and write the poems of Pushkin or invent electricity. His desire spread upward and downward from his loins, up his back toward his neck, and down his thighs to his knees and right down to his feet. The thought of the breasts of the beautiful woman sitting opposite him stirred a slight shiver around his own nipples. His imagination showed him her childlike fingers giving him rapid little pinches on his back and on the back of his neck, as Ivria used to do when she wanted to speed up his beat, and because he was thinking about Ivria's hands he opened his eyes and saw Annemarie's hands slicing triangles of quivering cheesecake for him and her brother. Suddenly he noticed a number of brown blotches on the back of her hand, from the pigment that was inescapably concentrating because of the aging of the skin. At once his desire went limp and instead there came gentleness and compassion and sorrow and also memories of her weeping a few minutes earlier and the faces of the girls and the boy that the brother and sister had lost in their divorce suits. He stood up and said he was sorry.
"It's time for me to go," he said.
"Out of the question," Vermont erupted, as though offended beyond his powers of forbearance. "You're not walking through that door. The night is still young. Sit down. Let's watch something on the VCR. What do you like? Comedy? A thriller? Maybe something a little racy."
Now he remembered that it was Netta who several times had urged him to call on these neighbors, and almost forbidden him to stay in by himself. And to his own surprise he said: "All right. Why not." He sat down again in the armchair and stretched his legs out comfortably on the footrest, and added: "I don't mind. Whatever you choose will be fine for me." Through the webs of tiredness he noticed a hurried whispering between brother and sister, who stretched her arms so that the sleeves of her kimono opened out like the wings of a bird in flight. She left the room and came back wearing a different kimono, a red one, and affectionately rested her hands on her brother's shoulders as he bent over and tinkered for a moment with the VCR. When he finished he straightened up heavily and tickled her under her ears the way one pets a cat to make it purr. They poured Yoel another Dubonnet, the lighting in the room changed, and the television screen began to flicker. Even if there is some simple way of liberating the predator in the figurine from the torment of its trapped paw without breaking it or hurting it, there is still no answer to the question how and where a creature will leap if it has no eyes. The source of the torment, after all, is not in the point of fusion between the base and the paw, but somewhere else. Exactly as the nails in the Byzantine crucifixion scene were delicately fashioned and there was not a drop of blood exuding from the wounds, so that it was clear to the observing heart that it was not a matter of liberating the body from its attachment to the cross but liberating the youth with the feminine features from the prison of the body. Without breaking or causing further pain and torment. With a slight effort Yoel managed to concentrate and to reconstruct in his thoughts:
Crises.
The sea.
And the city at your fingertips.
And they shall be one flesh.
And rest in peace.
Shaking off his thoughts he saw that Ralph Vermont had softly left the room. Perhaps at this moment by secret agreement with his sister he was peeping through a crack in the wall, perhaps through a tiny pinhole in the boughs of one of the conifers in the sylvan backcloth. Silent, childlike, flushed, Annemarie sprawled on her back on the rug at his side, ready for a little love. Which Yoel was not ready for at that moment, because of the tiredness or because of the sadness that was inside him, but he was ashamed of his limpness and decided to lean forward and stroke her head. She took his ugly palm between her own hands and placed it on her breast. Pulling at a copper chain with her toes, she dimmed the forest lights still further. As she did so her thighs were exposed. Now he had no doubt that her brother was watching them and taking part, but he did not care, and in his heart he repeated the words "Itamar or Eviatar, what difference does it make now?" The leanness of her flesh, her hunger, her sobbing, the projection of her fine shoulder blades under the thin skin, unexpected nuances of little modesties within her eager yielding—there flickered through his head the shame in the attic, the thistles that surrounded his daughter, and Edgar Linton—Annemarie whispered in his ear: You're so considerate, so compassionate. And indeed from moment to moment he no longer considered the thrill of his own flesh, as though he had taken leave of his flesh and clothed himself in the flesh of the woman he was attending to, as though he were bandaging a tortured body, soothing a tormented soul, healing a little girl's suffering, attentive and precise to his fingertips, until she whispered to him: Now. And he, flooded with mercy and generosity, for some reason whispered back: Suit yourself.
When the comedy on the VCR was finished, Ralph Vermont returned and served coffee with special little mint chocolates wrapped in green foil. Annemarie left the room and returned this time wearing a burgundy blouse and baggy corduroy pants. Yoel looked at his watch and said, Well, comrades, it's the middle of the night, time for bed. At the door the Vermonts urged him to come and visit them again whenever he had a free evening. The ladies were all invited too.
Feeling limp and drowsy he walked across from their house to his, humming an emotional old Yaffa Yarkoni song. He stopped for a moment to say "Shut your trap, Ironside" to the dog, then went on humming and remembered Ivria asking him what had happened, why was he suddenly so happy, and answering her that he had found an Eskimo mistress, and her laughter and almost at that very moment his own discovery of how eager he was to deceive the Eskimo mistress with his own wife.
That night Yoel collapsed on his bed fully dressed and fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. He only managed to remind himself that he had to return the yellow sprayer to Krantz and that it might after all be a kindness to make a date to see Odelia and listen to her troubles and complaints, because it's pleasant to be a good man.