Chapter 56
Dialysis
“At first, I took the talk about hair loss very hard,” Lily laughed. “But now I really don’t care about being bald – it might even become part of a future work of mine,” she told me one evening. I couldn’t argue with her. The subject had already gone places I didn’t want to go.
“Then before you cut your hair, I want to photograph you,” I asked her.
“Before you photograph me, I want to put on makeup.”
“That’s fine, but why now?”
“Because you’ve sparked a new idea in me.”
“But you never wear makeup – maybe just a touch here and there, maybe.”
“This time I want to … really want to.” Lily smiled.
“Let me photograph you first without makeup, and then with.”
“All right,” she answered in a tone that made it clear there was no point in asking for further explanation.
In general, Lily didn’t like to be photographed casually. But when she did pose, she knew how to present herself. She let me take a few shots without makeup. Right after, she applied it heavily, especially around her eyes.
“Photograph me during the process,” she asked. I did as she said. When she finished putting on the makeup, I took more pictures from angles I thought might be interesting.
“So what do you want to do with the pictures?”
“Exhibit them at the College of Art and Design.”
“In what context?”
“Body art. Oh, I forgot to show you the work I did with one of the photos you took in the desert.” Lily went into her studio and came back with a large wooden board. I stared at the work, stunned. I didn’t understand how she managed to shock me, more and more and over and over.
She had mounted the “Burial in the Desert” photo on the board. She had attached a cotton form wrapped in white cloth to its bottom, like a shroud, with a bloodstain at its center.
As I photographed her, there was a knock at the door.
Neither of us remembered who was supposed to come.
Only when I opened the door and saw Lily’s mother did I recall that we had invited her that evening.
She walked in and looked at the work Lily was holding.
Her eyes widened, then after a few seconds, she turned them away.
She didn’t want to see how her daughter was tormenting herself.
Lily put the work down and went to the kitchen to make tea.
“How could you let her do this kind of work?” her mother asked me angrily.
“Remember how you told me she’s stubborn and won’t listen when it comes to her health? Well, in art she’s exactly the same.”
The message from the work was so clear, sharp, and chilling.
I could only imagine to what level she would have taken it if I had photographed the actual burial of her life mask in Solomon River in the desert – an event that looked as if it had taken place centuries ago…
“What goes through your head when you create these works?” I asked after her mother left.
“I can’t define it exactly, but I know I want to confront these subjects – illness, death. It’s a direct continuation of my disabled project. I don’t want to deny my condition or the fact that I’m on my way to … I don’t even know where.” she answered honestly.
“What kind of responses do you get at the College of Art and Design?” I asked, curious about the artistic side.
“Usually professional and to the point. After all, they don’t know anything about me.
” When I asked what she planned to do with the photos, she said she wanted to display them in a series, side by side, showing physical – and perhaps psychological – deterioration, and that for this she needed my help.
“I brought hospital papers, like you asked,” I told her the next day when I came home. Lily came out of her room. Her hair was cropped short. The cut highlighted her green eyes all the more. I was speechless. She looked stunning.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I went with my mother. She drove me to Bnei Brak.”
“And what did you do with the hair?”
“They’ll make a wig for me. In the meantime, I bought this one.” She pointed to a plastic stand holding a wig that matched her natural color but not the texture. She put it on.
“Take it off – the short cut really suits you. Much better than long hair,” I told her.
“If you like the short cut so much, then you take it off for me.”
I removed the wig and found another Lily before me, radiant, and wonderful. If this was the baldness that awaited her, then it was beautiful. But inside I knew it was another kind of baldness – the baldness of radiation, of chemotherapy, treatment she was supposed to undergo.
“If the hair falls out, better it’s short now so the difference won’t be so great,” she chuckled.
“Yours won’t fall out – you’re made of something else. Even the steroids didn’t affect you like others. You had no side effects.”
“But this new drug – Imuran, I think – causes hair loss.”
“Not you, I’m telling you, not you. You look amazing with it short. At least this glass is half full.”
“You’re just flattering me – you don’t want to hurt me.”
“You’re gorgeous, amazing – what do you want me to say?”
“That you love me.”
“I love you, I love you, I love you. Should I go on? Stop?”
“Enough, I believe you.” She smiled a captivating smile, her chin tilting unevenly the way only she could smile. In her studio, I saw a long wooden board, about two meters by forty centimeters.
“What are you doing with this?”
“Look.” She pointed to the tiles beyond it. On them lay nine photos of her face before the haircut, each altered with different colors. It was a series that began with a normal face and ended with one showing madness.
“Are you checking yourself in?” I teased.
“You’ll write psychiatric diagnoses on the papers you brought – from normal to psychotic.”
“And what will you do with it?”
“Under each photo, there will be a diagnosis. This is the normal one,” she pointed to the clean photo on the left, “and this is the psychotic,” she pointed to the frightening one on the right.
“And these,” she pointed to the others, “are the intermediate stages.”
I couldn’t refuse. I did everything she asked, while she stood over me, watching closely.
“This is live art,” I told her. “Not imaginary.”
“I’m experiencing what you only see – every moment, every minute.”
I knew and stayed silent. There was nothing to say.
“Believe me, my love, it’s not easy.”
“My Lily, I know. Can I help you?” I hugged her, enveloped her. I wanted to swallow her, give her my life.
“I don’t want you to suffer. It’s enough that I suffer.” She held my head in both hands and looked straight into my eyes from below. We kissed fiercely, passionately.
A few days later, her markers worsened again, and it was decided to begin regular dialysis. That night, Serge, Max, and David surprised us by coming to the hospital. They visited Lily whenever they could.
At one point, when I was alone with David, I reminded him of what he had told me in officers’ training.
In response, he hugged me and said he knew he couldn’t stop me, and he deeply respected what I had done.
When I told him Lily needed dialysis, I broke down.
I burst into hysterical tears, knowing another line had been crossed.
I hardly knew what treatment options even existed for someone in her condition.
None of his attempts to comfort me worked. Not his threats to beat me, not his jokes. I was swept into a wave of tears, sure that I would never be able to stop.
Eventually, the tears subsided. Once I had calmed down, we went together to Lily’s room. Max and Serge had already left. David stayed. He talked with Lily until morning, while I dozed in the chair.
The next day, after the surgery to create the arteriovenous shunt in her arm, Lily was transferred to Pioneer Hospital, to the dialysis ward. The department head even came especially to say goodbye.
The welcome at the new hospital was very warm. It seemed someone had told them about her beforehand – someone who very much wished her well. The department head asked to meet her privately. I waited outside.
“He’s wonderful,” she told me when she came out.
The shunt was not yet ready for use, so Lily had to undergo her first dialysis through a catheter in the femoral artery and vein.
The anger I felt toward the deputy threatened to burst my chest. Although she had known this was the natural course of the illness, she hadn’t prepared Lily for standard dialysis with a shunt.
The pain in her thigh gave Lily no rest, to the point that she said she would rather die than go through it again.
Sadly, the deputy’s demand: “Be her husband” still echoed in me.
The next dialysis was done through the shunt in her left arm. What a difference!!!