This was how I, Tamar, started going offworld, far from everything that I knew: mother father trees chairs house sun. I did not want to become alienated and yet it happened, despite myself, the shiver acting according to its whims. All of a sudden, all the things I knew both were and weren’t the same things, the same people, the same mother and father, trees chairs house and sun. Everything would take on a darker and more unsettling shade, the light was stronger, the contrasts heightened to the point of bothering me.
So many times I would run to hide my face in my mother’s lap, in the hope that everything would go back to being at peace, in its usual place. Something was broken, of course, but where. I would sit, straining to imagine the inside of my brain to find the crack, the cleft, the slash or I don’t know what, and every time I would see it materialize in the fissure that runs along the wall at my grandmother’s house, ever since a day in summer when an earthquake drew across it a fine line, but ever so sharp and deep, splitting it for life. A coherent line, from the ground to the ceiling. Like borders on a map. That drawing contained a prophecy, it showed the map of my brain, but I would not reveal this to anyone, it would be known only to the only to the wall, me and my grave.
I felt the first shiver of the terrible as I was leaning against Maria’s window, that cursed window, and I thought that it is not only humans who can be cursed. From that day onwards, it felt as if the window had taken possession of a soul (it had stolen mine), for years I was afraid to go near it and when my eyes happened to run, by chance, into its white wood or steel handle, a searing alarm would give me the tremors.
Maria was an old lady who had had the audacity of giving birth to many sons. At night, while I waited for sleep, I applied myself to the tallying of her brood; it was an exercise that gave me a certain peace, but I could never count them all, there was always one missing. There were so many boys in that house, Luka—one, Rudolf—two, Pal—three, Mikel, Enea, Artur, Johan, and who knows how many more. And the sons’ wives, the sons’ sons. Cats, kittens. Even Maria’s cat seemed to have more babies than the other cats in the neighbourhood.
The bachelors slept all in one room. Over the dresser, amongst white cornflowers, a tearful Virgin Mary kept watch. I was never able to escape her gaze: though her pained face disguised the real reason for her hanging there, she was always alert, watching over the room. Maria had hung it with a patently clear intention and so she repeated tirelessly, pointing at the image with a threatening finger, Be careful, God sees everything!
The God in the arms of the Virgin Mary was a goldilocks child with blue eyes and a very serious appearance. I wondered all the time why on earth the God child was so serious, why indeed. Though I was growing up in front of the gaze in that image, though I was at Maria’s almost every day, I never became used to the seriousness of the child God, he always remained somehow new. Those eyes made me feel guilty.
I did nothing wrong, I would sing softly, then gawp at my shoes trying to bring together in a flash my brief existence, as if it were a short film, to find the error. There were no errors, even though sometimes I had thrown away the bread once I had licked off the jam, and then, of course—oh, this truly was terrible!—the week before I had torn the legs off some grasshoppers to watch them move forward using only their bodies. It had been them who had cursed me. Locked away in the matchbox where I had lined them up, those poor bodies were fading away slowly and without screaming, in a dignified silence I was not capable of.
Twisted by remorse at the thought of the child God, I could see again Maria’s wizened finger as she pointed at him, Be careful, Tamar! He sees everything.
Whose forgiveness should I ask for, I interrogated myself, then I said aloud to the grasshoppers, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, please believe me, I don’t know why I did it, I never thought about evil. I even kissed one of them: on the lips, it felt like touching wood.
I received no answer, the grasshopper bodies remained in the box, neat and quiet. I ran to Esmé, breathless, Oh, Mum! Mum, forgive me, I threw myself in her lap, my eyes full of the limbless and soundless grasshoppers, asking for her forgiveness, saying I was immensely sorry, and she said to me, Get up now, enough, then she smoothed the folds of her skirt.
I buried the bodies of the grasshoppers and, on the grave, I put a tin soldier in their honour. Then I ran into Maria’s sons’ room, I went near the painting of the child God and stared at him without blinking, I, Tamar, did nothing wrong, why do you make me feel guilty?
*
The naked bodies of the young men were sprawled around. Eight or nine bodies, free, sweaty of summer and sleep, clearly defined muscles jolting from time to time, ruffling their radiant skin for a moment. Some beautiful hands, really beautiful hands. Whose are they. Are they Rudolf’s or Artur’s. Sometimes their legs criss-cross. Their vests reveal armpits as dark as the thick mystery of life. Cigarette smoke obstinately covers the painting like cotton wool, the Virgin Mary and the child barely rise to the surface, then dissipate. Blessed be the bed, one of the boys sighs, and his features disappear into his pillow. I draw closer, in the half-light, following a smell without knowing who it belongs to, and in a flash my legs command me, Lean onto something, Tamar, as you’re about to faint, lean onto something because you’re frangible.
The refrain of Maria’s powerful steps between the courtyard and the rooms kept the house in line, like a pendulum splitting time in perfect seconds.
Are you still there, Tamar? She would tell me off. Why are you spying on the boys’ sleep? Come here, come into the kitchen, what you do is not right, I don’t like it. Did you hear me?
I would stand on the threshold, absorbed in the geometry of the naked bodies. Their breaths rustled in an orchestra of winds, inviting, Throw yourself right in the middle of these warm bodies, Tamar!
Maria would pull me away, taking me into the kitchen, This girl is so strange, you have no manners, are you listening to me? You have no limpidity—and she would look at me tenderly—you’ll be a lost soul!
Lost in a black well, my imagination prompted.
When Maria recommended me to remain limpid, lest my soul should be lost, I, Tamar, would see the clear drops of the raki she loved so well, then my soul as it slipped, a white and luminous ball, into perfect darkness. I would lean over the edge of the well, at risk of falling in, but there was nothing else that could be done, my soul had been lost.
Quiet and composed, I used to think that it was a great privilege to sit next to a person like Maria, who is feared by death itself, You know what, Tamar, this strong old lady and her faith might just save you from the black well, seeing as, though you don’t know where, you can count on the fact that that blackness exists, you have encountered it right at her windowsill.
Go on, child, what are you waiting for, massage my hands.
Having made her request, Maria lifts her inseparable shot glass, offering Pal a drop of raki. Pal is the only one of her sons who deserves those limpid and beneficial tears. “Tear” is indeed what Maria calls a drop of raki, My darling Pal, would you like a couple of tears? And she lovingly pours them into the glass, counting them out with a smile that bears the solemnity of a rite (later she will hide the bottle, escaping the shadow of prying eyes from all directions).
Only Pal has built his existence so that it would be worthy of his mother’s diamond tears. With his good match, he has brought her his wife Hera, irreplaceable when it comes to the house chores, never bored of doing the laundry for all of Maria’s sons, as innumerable and endless as they are. The young woman goes to and fro between the washing machine and the beds, then, who knows why, fills I don’t know how many basins of water and arranges them in the laundry room with mysterious care.
I used to massage and pamper Maria’s worn-out hands and, as soon as I stopped, the old lady would shake me and ask impatiently, What’s wrong with you? Keep going!
I liked being at Maria’s, especially during summer, as the days brought about a certain boredom, the tarmac complying with the treads of the shoes, the heat making us slow and lethargic, drying up our tongues, only the noise of running water dominating over everything as Hera filled her inexplicable basins.
The opportunity to observe the magic of the cat’s newborn kittens or to smile at Enea or Artur was the reason why I continued to exhaust myself over those withered hands that made me shiver at the thought of my own far-off but future old age. You see, Tamar? One day your hands too will look like this.
For Maria, any excuse was good enough to call her beloved Pal to her side. My darling Pal this, my darling Pal that.
My darling Pal, have a drop here with me, you’ve worked enough for one day, come on, just a couple of tears.
*
It was at Maria’s window that I felt for the first time the shiver that I have never been able to understand. It surely was a phenomenon that did not belong to the world or, at least, to my world. What I knew from before did not extend to that shiver. I had entered a realm that separated me from everyone else, I had discovered that there was a land, a sort of no-man's-field, onto which sometimes I stepped, unwitting. I would find myself there, with no consolation, I would look at the dust-hued horizon and unrest would squeeze my limbs.
I was leaning against the window, that cursed window, and a toy truck, identical to the one that had belonged to my brother Rafi and had been long lost, appeared on the windowsill to then disappear into nothing. Just like that, as if the windowsill had produced the toy truck that we had all been looking for, day after day.
I momentarily shifted my gaze towards Maria, Hera, Pal; I wanted to rinse my sight of that image that had appeared out of nowhere, then I brought my eyes back onto Rafi’s toy truck, which was still there, in front of me, in the world, and it really was his toy truck, as certain as death itself. I went to dunk my head in one of Hera’s many basins to ward off the shiver of the terrible that was running down the back of my head; I opened my eyes underwater, my hair was floating, undulating and dark, like the seaweed that morning when the sea drew back.
Again at the windowsill, I stretched my arm out to pick up the toy. The image melted, dripping from between my fingers, then—as soon as I moved my hand back—it reassembled, a toy truck again.
It is not for me to take, I said to myself, and I went to call Esmé so that we could go back to Maria’s window together.
Where’s this toy truck, she asked irritably, but Maria’s windowsill had already swallowed it up.
It was here, Esmé, I swear. I saw it. Only, I couldn’t grab it.
That’s nonsense, stop it right now.
I thought about the child God, it had been he who had made the toy appear and then disappear.
Esmé had gone, leaving me in Maria’s courtyard; I lifted my head and said aloud, The persimmons are ripe, the sun is shining. Everything is so obvious! Everything has been here since forever, and everything will be like this forever. It is promised. Calm your soul, Tamar.
The persimmons were not ripe, the sky was grey and rainy, but I repeated to myself, Everything has been here since forever, and everything will be like this forever. It is promised somewhere. Life is under control, daylight will come back tomorrow. At least until tomorrow. The world won’t end tonight, it can’t. That strange toy truck is not an omen of anything.
Maria’s kittens slept scattered on their mother’s belly. I lay down next to the quiet cats. Calm your soul, Tamar. It is promised. Everything has been here since forever, and everything will be like this forever. Even these cats, only a few hours old, know it.
*
Maria’s front door still shows light marks in its wood, traces, various incisions, smooth areas caused by the delicate hands of the young women who tapped on it, yearning to see one of the boys, Rudolf, Artur, Luka, or another one. If her sons were not paying attention, Maria would open her door an inch and say in a whisper, My son is not in, he’s gone out, I don’t know when he’ll be back.
By a mysterious agreement, the young women would stop in the middle of the street. All in the same spot. That stretch of land—where at first they would stand still, then wander as they waited—constituted the geography of disorientation. Some would cry and I, Tamar—always hidden—would observe everything, insatiable. Their tears would drip into my lungs, fill them up until breathing hurt. Pay attention, Tamar, desire might drive you crazy.
Rudolf spent his time lying on the sofa, he had joined us only recently. He has dark skin, long, rippling black hair, and light green eyes, he wears jeans, his body is lean with youth, his skin is taut to perfection along his arms, hands, chest, legs, feet. Rudolf’s feet are the essence of man, they have the strength and the virility wanting in his languid face, which is incredibly graceful. On his arms and chest, a shiny black down can be glimpsed.
When he first appeared on the living room threshold, he was coming straight out of fire and I heard the bells of a great danger ring wildly.
Rudolf is danger, Tamar, the place where you lose yourself forever. He is the unreachable that drives you mad, don’t go any closer. But it’s too late already. You’ve seen him. You know he exists.
He, the terrible Rudolf with marvel-eyes, is lying on the sofa, calm because he likes calm, while all of a sudden an agonizing need commands me, Drip all over his body, now. Right now. Or else your body will catch on fire. Drip yourself or else you’ll die, can you imagine the shame when Esmé, Auntie Lali, Maria, Dad and all the others will hear that you burned alive only because your stupid flesh wanted to press Rudolf’s flesh, even if above the shirt, even if above the jeans.
Had I dared to do so, he would have welcomed me with a generous smile and maybe stroked my hair and said, Are you alright, Tamar? Why do you look so sad today?
When the girls asked after Artur, Enea, or one of Maria’s other sons, I knew that the real desire was for Rudolf. I was certain, They all want Dolfi, they all come here for Dolfi.
Dolfi is his nickname. Every time you meet his marvel-eyes, your heart thuds to the ground, you need to pick it up and put it back in its place. It is not over yet, though, all your organs jolt, telling you that you’ve Found, Met, that Something has happened.
This confusion is nothing but the banal tremors of love, the same old stuff, as reiterated and worn out as humans themselves. But one thing is certain: I, Tamar, am not in love with Dolfi. I have never been in love with Dolfi. The fact that my organs would quake was due to a chemical error triggered by those eyes, by the sharp pupils as deep as the well in which my soul had already been lost.
Dolfi smiles and a glorious strip of white teeth breaks you in half and makes you feel defeated. From that moment onwards, you are doomed to knock at Maria’s door, finding any excuse just to see him.
This is life and so it must be, young women must knock at the door while he sleeps or watches television, they leave with their eyes empty but they will be back, there is no way out, since the strong and glorious strip of Dolfi’s teeth makes you thankful, thankful to whom?
I always looked for something to thank for those triumphant teeth, those teeth so white, born out of the gums just to be admired. It was in honour of that gratuitousness, of the fact that they existed only for beauty, that I bowed in front of them. Anatomically, teeth have a precise function, Tamar. Look how Dolfi’s refuse this primordial role. They erupt only to be lovely and to torment, there’s something heroic in all this.
Dolfi would smile, and I would understand from his naive smile that this thing with the teeth, with his marvel-green eyes, with his mole on the cheek, with the thick hair, with the dark down that clothed his skin in preciousness, was not something that he had asked for. Yes, I did try to be beautiful, I indeed tried to be beautiful with all my strength, until it hurt, until I felt like I was about to die, but he, Dolfi—beauty had rained on him, he had been born like this, poor thing. I want to say poor thing, My Poor, Beautiful Dolfi, he had nothing to do with his radiance.
I stared at the spot where the tooth sank into the gum, See, Tamar, see the perfection that kills. You could die for those teeth.
Why could I die?
Because they’re invincible, Tamar, they’re the beauty that you can never grasp, ever.
Dolfi did not realize that many people had become subdued to him at the sight of his teeth, he could say to a man or a woman, to me, Tear open your intestines, right here, now, I want to see them.
I would have done it.
Jump off this bridge, Tamar, I would like to see how you fall.
I would have jumped right in front of his eyes, with no hesitation whatsoever.
Then certainly he would have come close to me, certainly he would have picked me up in his arms and said, You’re stupid, Tamar! It was a game, don’t you know the difference between a game and life? A game is pretending, you stupid child. Pretending to fall.
I did not live of Dolfi, nor through Dolfi, but I knew a life burned in the pursuit of the uncatchable, I understood what it was to die for Dolfi, for his smile. I too, Tamar, felt that I desired something uncatchable, even if I could not give it a name. It took many shapes, my desire, I only sensed that it was sly, that it deceived me, slipping like an eel from between my fingers, from between my thighs.
I want to say that I was not, that I am not in love with Dolfi.
*
Some people were perennially mothers, like Maria, some women were born to be wives, like Hera, and do the laundry of an endless family. The cat would bring her kittens home every autumn, Dolfi would always be young, his teeth eternally white. Girls would continue to knock at the door, I, Tamar, would always be a spectator and, from time to time, I would feel that strange shiver that runs through my skull and pushes me away from everything. We are born and everything is already decided, the roles are already cast.
Dolfi’s role was to epitomize the face and the body of love, the eternal promises, the eternal yearnings. Maria’s was to be a mother and nothing else. Hera did the laundry.
Why do you fill all these basins with water, Hera?
I don’t know.
Just count them! Nine. Nine basins of water. But why?
To be clean, Tamar, one is never clean enough.
Her thin back, bent over the basins, confessed, Hera does not even know of the existence of roles.
The fact that I thought about my role, did not love my role, wanted to change it, especially the fact that I wanted to change it, had something to do with the affliction and the shiver in my skull. I, Tamar, did not choose to think about my role, it happened to me, just like beauty happened to Dolfi, bitterness to Esmé, death to Rafi, and buxomness to Lali.
I wondered whether someone would ever burn to lie down next to me the same way one burns to lie down next to Dolfi, whether there would ever be someone who found any excuse just to be close to me.
Fragile hands never knocked at my door. No one had ever cried, motionless and disoriented, on the centimetres of land in front of my house, people went by me, went through me, they did not see me, I am see-through.
*
Manuela would come every day to our street, she was the girl who lingered the longest in the land of disorientation. Only once did she not come for an entire week, I was worried, I thought she had died, I was convinced, I could see her surrounded by flowers in a shiny black coffin, her drab eyes half open. I wanted to run to Dolfi and tell him, Manuela is dead, but I held myself back, gave myself a deadline, if I don’t see her by Tuesday, I’ll tell Dolfi that the girl who used to cry for him is dead.
She reappeared on Monday, paler and thinner than ever. My heart jumped as if she had come back from the afterlife, funeral cornflowers adorning her hair.
That day, she did not go near the door of her beloved, nor did she the next day. She simply leant against the wall, as if in punishment. She did not dare knock, she was toing and froing, she was talking to herself, then she would tidy up her dress, she would play a game, pretending to walk on a tightrope.
Her being there had something heroic, like the glorious strip of Dolfi’s teeth. She would draw in the dust with the tip of her sandals, lifting from time to time her gaze to the door. That gaze, I knew it from even before I was born, it was impressed in the dark passages of my mind, encrusted in my skin since the time I was offal among Esmé’s intestines. I knew that, in those moments, Manuela was organless, a body full of salt water and nothing else. This is why she was leaning against the wall, or else that blood turned water would pour out from her drab eyes, frightening Dolfi and love.
It is fragile, love, it takes nothing at all to dissolve it, as Esmé had revealed to me.
It had happened to me too, once or twice in my life, my organs would go on a pilgrimage, the internal space of my body would fill with salt water, I could barely move, with care, since the minimal brushing against my skin would cause caustic drops to come out of my eyes. Just like it happened to Manuela.
As soon as Maria would come outside, Manuela would hide, always composed and with a certain dignity.
The dignity of a girl who is not pretty, suggested the voice within me, a grace born out of want of beauty. The fact that she was not pretty had endeared her to me, or rather I was attached to Manuela, I thought of her like a sister, I was bound to her by a secret friendship. I wanted to do many things for her. I wanted to help her because she was languid with melancholy, because we were similar despite a great difference—she was in love with Dolfi, I wasn’t, I loved looking at Dolfi.
Manuela lay in wait for two days, hidden, then at the end of the second day Dolfi left the house and she ran after him, grabbed his arm to make him stop and never ever let it go.
She had pushed him against a wall and was talking to him. I tried obstinately to read the movements of her lips, her long speech. It was only her talking and falling silent, Dolfi didn’t seem to be even listening, he was looking down. She stared at him as he walked away until he was gone, he did not notice because he would never look back, not for any girl.
He was happy, Dolfi, he was well, he wanted for nothing.
How are you, Dolfi? Do you need anything?
I would ask him this question, a question that I loved to ask to many people, almost everyone, to then listen carefully, intent, curious until it hurt, waiting to hear how people are, how others are in life. I was looking for allies to better endure the want I felt and continue to feel.
I wished for Dolfi to show me a bit of his soul, to see how his threads intertwined deep down.
Until not too long ago, I had never seen him up close: he was always shut in one room, studying all day, and talking to him was impossible. His presence was the sound of the violin and the metronome. I was convinced that he wanted for something, like I did, but unlike me he pretended not to notice, or maybe he didn’t know. I don’t know what I want for. My own voice alternates the accusations, You want for beauty, Tamar, had you been beautiful, everything would be different, You want for love, You want for a great talent, You want for peace, light. It is a fact that, with every breath, I come and go into and out of a void that devours and asks to be filled with urgency, but I do not know what—or rather I have nothing to give to it, nothing to offer to my great abyss.
Nothing, Tamar, Dolfi would answer, I don’t need anything. I think I have everything I should. I’m well, I’m calm, I love to sleep. I love spending time with you, talking to you. I make do with the life I have, or at least I try to.
There you go. My heart had jolted, I had perceived, glimpsed, touched his fissure. He did have one too. In those harmless words—or at least I try to—I, Tamar, discovered his want.
I never managed to understand how one can make do with life when there isn’t enough of it at all. For me, it is impossible, I do not know how to say with a smile, I think I have everything I should. I think sows doubt, reveals the great effort of staying where one is. I think sounds terrible to me, and when I hear it I see the God of the Last Judgement, his hand raised, and the finger pointing at the unforgivable. I think looks like a stern punishment. I never say it.
