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 way home, 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.
After they pulled the baby out of me, they brought her to me for a moment.
I burst into tears, and they swaddled her deftly and handed her over to Halimi.
Sometime later, I found myself in the recovery room—I had no idea what was going on outside the room, and I lay there, alone, wondering if I was going to shiver and tremble like that for the rest of my life.
During the two hours in the recovery room, the nurse barely paid attention to me.
Dina told me stories about friends of hers who got morphine after a C-section, but perhaps in Germany they treat their patients better.
After begging and pleading, between fits of uncontrollable shaking, I managed to get liquid ibuprofen.
“It’s quite normal,” the nurse said in an apathetic voice when I called her to me again.
“It’s the epidural and the pain medication leaving your system,” she said.
When I weakly asked if I could get something stronger, the nurse shrugged her shoulders and said that ibuprofen was standard.
My father came into the recovery room and said that Halimi was with the baby, that he and my mom had already seen her and she was perfect, and that everything would be fine.
He sat by my bedside for a few minutes. But he was horrified at the sight of me, convulsing uncontrollably.
He gave me a kiss and left. Then, my mother came in.
She held my hand and stroked me for a few minutes in loving silence, then the nurse asked her to leave and added something to the IV.
I was released from the hospital four days later.
During that time, I was crammed into a room with another woman (who had just given birth) and her nudnik husband.
I promised myself never to have another C-section.
I could not lift myself up in bed unaided.
I could barely turn from side to side. Everything hurt.
I had trouble breastfeeding. Most of the nurses were unbearably efficient and coldhearted.
It took me a while to get used to the fact that this minuscule creature, crumpled and red-faced, was my daughter. At night, I stared at her and tried not to cry. Sometimes, I failed.
Halimi came and went. He tried to make himself useful but mostly looked after the baby. He negotiated with the nurses and did his best to get them to help me breastfeed.
On the third day, my mood improved a little.
I got the hang of breastfeeding. The list of possible names for the baby was whittled down to three.
The nurses disconnected me from the catheter and the IV.
Halimi lay down beside me in the narrow bed and hugged me.
The baby slept peacefully in her bassinet.
I started to believe it might all work out.
On the way home in a cab, after long days under the neon hospital lights, the reality facing me seemed precarious, like a paper so flimsy, the slightest stress would tear it.
The fact that the world continued to exist as always somehow hurt my feelings.
Climbing the stairs of our building, Halimi held the car seat with the baby in it, while I gripped the handrail and dragged my sorry ass up to our apartment.
The house was clean and tidy. I drank some cold water and discovered that the fridge was full of my favorite food.
Halimi carefully took the baby out of the car seat and laid her in the new cradle by our double bed.
He stayed by her side and looked at her, stroking her delicate cheek with one long finger.
I wobbled off to the bathroom to pee. My body was both heavy and skittish.
After a few days away from home, the bathroom smelled different.
I felt like a visitor to my own life. The birth was irreversible, an act that couldn’t be undone.
I was completely enslaved to the needs of a fragile and helpless creature toward whom I didn’t feel particularly maternal.
I felt only a sense of endless, burdensome responsibility. It was paralyzing.
“Diti, what’s going on?” Halimi asked from the other side of the door.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I said, trying to sound calm.
One heartless thought consoled me: the possibility that if I didn’t look after that baby properly, someone would simply take her away (or she would die, another voice whispered, terrified at the thought), and I’d go back to being me.
I was overcome with both terror at the existence of such a voice inside my brain and utter shame.
Fits of weeping that had begun to subside began all over again.
“Diti! Idit!” Halimi said from the other side of the door, a note of urgency in his voice. “Please come out.”
I pulled myself together and wiped my face on my dress. I was still wearing my baggy pregnancy clothes, and the dress was stained. Someone would have to do laundry, I thought, and another howl escaped me. Every single task seemed insurmountable.
“Come on, Diti. Really.” Halimi was beginning to get impatient. I got to my feet with a groan.
“It might look like I’m overreacting,” I moaned. “But I swear, I’m having a really hard time.” I said it more to myself than Halimi, suppressing panic.
When I finally opened the door, I got so dizzy, he had to hold me up to stop me from collapsing. We grinned, and he helped me into the living room, where he covered me with a blanket.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” he asked. “Both,” I murmured.
“And I have to take a shower,” I said, before falling asleep.
I don’t know how long I slept. When I woke up, I showered and got dressed in a beloved pair of pajamas that didn’t fit me while I was pregnant.
I ate well and drank large quantities of herbal tea.
Halimi walked up and down our apartment with the baby in his arms, humming to her in a low voice.
He changed her diaper. I glanced at the clock and saw it was already eight in the evening.
As far as I was concerned, it could have been two in the morning.
“Let me hold her for a while,” I said to Halimi. He smiled and placed the baby in my arms. She was dressed in a tiny onesie that was too big for her. Halimi dropped into the armchair and closed his eyes.
The baby latched onto my nipple quite easily, and I felt a rush of pleasure as the milk flowed steadily through my breast. I looked at her and tried to decide whether she was Millie, Lily, or Abigail.
The latter name seemed too serious a name for such a young creature, and Millie sounded outdated and foreign.
The baby opened her eyes, deep blue oceans behind slightly swollen eyelids.
“You’re Lily,” I told her. I looked at Halimi.
“Limi,” I said, “Let’s go with Lily.” He nodded his assent, eyes still closed.
When we got back from the playground, Lily looked for Halimi.
“Daddy!” she roared as she entered the living room.
She rushed over to him. Halimi got down on his knees and gathered her up, falling backward onto the rug and laughing with pleasure.
After that, they played swords for twenty minutes—she with the wooden one from Richard, and Halimi with the old plastic one.
Lily was on her best behavior at dinner and ate well.
Simone asked if she could put her to bed (“Ma petite, we won’t be seeing you for a few months now”), and Lily agreed with the generosity of an enlightened despot.
Halimi offered to clear the table and load the dishwasher, and I went out onto the balcony for a cigarette with Richard.
“So, what do you think of the house? Are you enjoying living here?” Richard asked, smoking his pipe.
“Very much,” I answered and sipped the last of my port.
“Merci, Richard, thank you so much,” I said, feeling a little weird at the huge discrepancy between the magnificent gift we’d been given and my modest gratitude.
He waved his hand dismissively. “Rien de rien,” he said, and we smoked in silence for a few minutes.
Later, he told me that he had also lived in the house for a few months, right after he inherited it, but was compelled to return to Paris for work.
“I so loved living by the sea,” he said.
I didn’t know if he was just putting it on, since he and Simone were endlessly traveling the world.
I asked Richard why his Catholic uncle from Toulouse had owned a house in Atlit, of all places, and he gave an indistinct answer about a property that had been handed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years.
Before I had time to interrogate him further, Simone and Halimi joined us.
Halimi amused his mother and Richard with a long, complicated story about some scandalous incident at the radio station the week before, and I rested my head on Halimi’s lap and began to drift off.
I always loved hearing Halimi speak French, even after all our years together.
As he spoke, Halimi stroked my back and ass unobtrusively.
I went off to pee and to see if my period was finished, but it wasn’t.
I knew that after Simone and Richard left, Halimi would want me, and that we’d make out at least until he came.
This both turned me on and annoyed me. I put on clean panties, and when I came out of the bathroom, Simone and Richard had already gone off to finish packing.
Halimi stood in the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea.
“Do you want some?” he asked. I shook my head and went over to the couch.
Halimi leaned against the countertop and sipped his tea noisily, fixing his eyes on me with lust. “I’ve still got my period,” I announced.
“Still?” he complained, as if I had control over it.
“It’s almost over, but not quite,” I replied.
I started to say something else, but Simone came down the stairs suddenly.
“C’est tout, my darlings,” she said, dragging a suitcase behind her.
Richard, wearing an impeccably tailored suit, appeared with a slightly bigger suitcase.
We all embraced. Halimi led them out to the rental car.
I went outside to smoke a final cigarette on the balcony.
Halimi’s cell phone lay beside the ashtray.
Out of habit, I picked it up and ran my finger over the screen to unlock it.
That’s when I discovered that Halimi had changed his password.
I put the phone back and smoked in silence, leaning against the handrail, my ears picking up the sea’s murmurings, or so it seemed to me.
The ruins of the fortress of Atlit were dimly illuminated by the lights from the military base and the moon.
Twang, twang, imaginary fingers plucked imaginary strings.