I went inside as unobtrusively as I could, heart beating wildly. They weren’t inside, so I walked through to the pretty patio where everyone sat when the weather was nice. I saw Halimi right away, with a skinny, good-looking girl who was laughing at one of his jokes. Halimi’s handreached out to remove a crumb from her hair. I kept going as if possessed, until I was standing in front of Halimi and the girl.
“Oh my God!” the girl blurted as my huge belly blocked her line of vision.
“Diti,” Halimi said, alarmed. “Is everything okay?”
“Just wonderful!” I snarled. I reached behind me with one hand and pulled up a chair. I sat down with a thud. Halimi’s mouth hung open. He stared at me for a few seconds, and I stared back.
“Idit,” Halimi said icily.
“Saul,” I replied, matching his tone. He opened his eyes wide and shook his head slowly. I didn’t know whether he was berating me or apologizing. He probably didn’t know either. His Camels lay on the table. I helped myself to a cigarette and lit it with deep satisfaction. “Idit,” Halimi repeated, squirming uncomfortably in his chair.
“Sorry, am I embarrassing you?” I asked, panting heavily. Halimi was quick to assume an expression of amusement. I gaped at him like an open grave.
“Diti, why are you looking at me like that? Chill out,” he said, turning serious again. “Please, meet Annabelle.” I snickered bitterly and immediately felt embarrassed. “Annabelle’s a highly successful artist from Stockholm, here to work on an important project in Netivot.”
Halimi mumbled the last few words into his chin as I turned my attention to Annabelle (“She had killer style and a beautiful face,” I later described her to Dina. “Thick, fair hair, pale blue eyes, and all that. A face that reminded me of Miss Piggy, but really beautiful. Yup.”).
Annabelle looked me in the eyes, and I could imagine a lump gathering in her throat. “Do you think I’m an embarrassment too?” I asked her without even trying to control the tremor in my voice.
“I don’t think so,” Annabelle’s voice shook.
“Diti, Diti, enough,” Halimi begged.
In the taxi home, we each looked out of a different window. Thestreets flashed by slowly, and all the usual things that people did—crossing the street, dragging shopping carts behind them, casually chatting, waiting for a bus—seemed to me superfluous, like some dumb show that kept on going long after the audience had left.
“You told me you wanted us to be free,” Halimi said in a flat voice, without turning to face me.
I nodded my head sadly at the window. “But we agreed you’d share, that you’d tell me.”
“To share what with you?” Halimi lunged at me. “That I’m attracted to someone? That I flirted with someone? That I got a boner when I imagined her giving me a blowjob? How much detail do you want?” The taxi driver froze in his seat and took a hard look at us in the rearview mirror.
“Idiot! We’re newlyweds!” I yelled at him with all the strength my whale-body could muster. “We just got married last week! What the hell is your problem?”
Halimi’s eyes locked with mine resolutely. “Perhaps I really am a bit of an ass,” he admitted. “But maybe that’s part of this whole issue—I feel so free with you that it’s kind of become a way to celebrate what we have together. The fact that I’m truly free.” I tried to work out if this was even logical, and I caught the driver nodding his head.
“He really played her,” I imagined the driver telling his wife later. “And she fell for it,” I imagined him adding, knowing there was no way on earth his wife would stand for something like that.
They’re clueless, I thought.They know nothing.
I woke up with a start on the couch. My hand reached out for my huge belly, and for a moment I panicked at its absence. But Lily was born a long time ago, I remembered with relief, turning over onto my back.
When I told Dina about my mushroom adventures, she took it kind of badly. She was full of concern; all of a sudden, she looked old. She even called Georg and asked me to tell him everything all over again.Sheepishly, I briefly repeated the trip I’d had, my rusty German making me feel a bit ridiculous. Georg listened patiently, asked a few questions, and nodded his head gravely. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he reassured my sister, and then he turned his attention to me, his voice full of good intention. “It’s part of the whole thing.”
It was truly magic, I told myself, recalling the glossy manes of those magnificent horses, in fine fabrics and exquisite embroidery, better dressed than I’d ever been. I was stressed by all that magic at the time, and yes, I freaked out, I only wanted to arrive back home in one piece—but if it were to happen again …
CHAPTER 8
Richard and Simone returned home from a walk around two o’clock, rosy-cheeked and energized. They returned five minutes after Halimi, who was delayed in Tel Aviv—as usual. I wasn’t worried. I began making lunch while listening to Gregorian chants. The music was a little gloomy, but there was something sublime about it, and although the day had clouded over, I felt light and airy. While humming along with the monks, I made cute panda shapes out of the rice to appeal to Lily. I welcomed Halimi home with a kiss that oozed affection. He was taken aback. It went without saying that he’d already concocted an alibi for his lateness, a crafty mix of truth and lies, but I didn’t care.Let him do what the hell he likes, I thought as I went to pick up Lily from preschool. That was the whole idea from the beginning.
Lily was easygoing and all smiles as she said goodbye to her teacher. I gave her an orange to eat, and all the way home we talked about flowers and plants and fruit. I had to stop myself from hugging her every three seconds. Although it was only April, daylight saving had lengthened the days, and Lily convinced me to take her to the playground. She bounced from swings to seesaws while I sat on a bench.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. A text from Halimi. “Where are you two? We’re waiting.” I texted him that we were on our wayhome, and he asked me to buy bread and hard cheese. I replied with a smiley face.
Lily Rozhevsky-Halimi was born by C-section, which incapacitated me for almost a month. The surgery itself was fine, medically speaking. Halimi sat by my side, wearing a white mask that barely covered his long nose. The anesthesiologist was not the most endearing person I had ever met, but he was attentive and efficient. A green curtain separated me from the lower part of my body, around which the medical team gathered, discussing the procedure and arguing over the right way to slice open a watermelon.
Halimi’s eyes were focused on me in an attempt to project serenity and confidence—but once in a while, his attention strayed with tense curiosity to the other side of the curtain. I was feeling nauseated, painfully aware of the low but troublesome hum of the medical instruments. It turned into a C-section because Lily was breech, and I was too stressed to consider any other way. Dina told me not to hassle and simply to go for the C-section (of course, she had had both her children in a paddling pool at home, with only Georg and a midwife in the room).
My parents waited outside, biting their fingernails and walking up and down the hallway.
