I came close to her.
We both loved the magnificent desert landscape, the mountains behind us, the blue sea before us, and the composition that united them.
“Lily, we’ll be here thousands of times more. This place is ours.” I held her hands.
“No, Michael, no. I know this is our last time.” She came closer, hugged me, and began to cry. Tears flooded from me too. I couldn’t hold them back. We embraced and kissed as we had that first time, long ago. When I pulled back and looked at her face in fear.
I too began to believe that maybe this really was our last time here together.
Indeed, Lily never went back there again. But the clods of earth, stained red, remained at the mouth of the stream for many years afterward.
Chapter 54
Another Exhibition
A few days after photographing the flag, Lily said goodbye to Eilat and moved in with her parents. The students at the workshop were completely shocked by the announcement of her departure. They begged her to stay for a farewell party they wanted to hold in her honor. Lily refused. From the moment she made her decision, she was determined to leave the city at any cost. No parties. In silence. She was sure that living in the center would make things easier for her. She never imagined how much she would miss the pace of life in Eilat.
From her parents’ house, she went to her studies, to the galleries, and to the hospital for tests. I had to remain in the southern city alone for a few more weeks, until a replacement doctor arrived at the base. In the meantime, I traveled up to Tel-Aviv two or three times a week. On one of the weekends when I stayed in the center, we found an apartment to rent in Ramat Aviv.
She chose the room facing south toward Eilat as her workroom.
For the exhibition in Rehovot, Lily prepared twelve drawings on identical sheets of white cardboard. She bought charcoal, watercolors, and gouache – materials she had hardly used before. I wasn’t surprised. I had known from the start that this time she would do something completely different. I could feel it.
Her behavior also changed. For reasons unclear to me, Lily decided not to include me in the process of creating the work. Maybe she wanted to surprise me. Maybe she was hiding something. Maybe she didn’t feel comfortable sharing it with me. This time, I was especially anxious about the content ofthe work, about the darkness she might be concealing inside. I wanted her to share it with me, but I also didn’t want to pressure her. From her responses to my questions, I realized she had decided that only once she had finished would she present the work to me. Perhaps it was a response to my refusal to fully cooperate with her back in the desert.
“I want to finish the work this weekend,” she told me about two weeks before the opening of the exhibition.
“You haven’t even started,” I whispered in her ear. “Right?”
“True, but I don’t want to get stuck. I have to finish it. I’ve worked out an idea. I hope you’ll like it.”
“What’s the subject?”
“Don’t be clever. You know I don’t tell until I’m done.”
I understood that what mattered most to her was that the new work – whatever it would look like, whatever it would contain – would please me. At that stage, she cared less about what the visitors would think.
“Why not tell me? P-l-e-a-s-e!”
“P-l-e-a-s-e, be patient!” she answered, imitating me.
The decline in Lily’s kidney function forced her onto a special diet. Therefore, she preferred not to join me for Shabbat at my parents’ house, so as not to upset my mother. This time, I used the “exhibition and the pressure on her” as an excuse for her absence. Later, when I returned from my parents’ house, she told me that about half of her work was already finished.
“Can I see it?” I asked politely.
“If you insist … but I’d rather you see it only when it’s complete… I promise it will be much more impressive!”
“So do you want me to…?”
“If you don’t mind.” She cut me off.
“Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to rest?”
“No!”
“Then I’ll go rest. But when I wake up, you’ll show me.”
“All right.” She hugged me in loving complicity.
