Motti by Asaf Schurr Read Free Book Online Page A

of love still awaits them.
    Will she scream when she comes? Will she only gasp for air? Maybe she’ll just sigh with a voice so faint it will barely be heard, but he will listen, will know that he brought her this pleasure.

20
    In the end they’ll be together forever, Motti thinks while the lights of nighttime cars outline his shadow in the room, on the wall against which he’s placed his left cheek, etc.
    But this “forever,” what does it mean? Will they be together until the very end, that is, in the same moment close their eyes and take leave of the world? Maybe there will be a terminal disease. And it will attack Ariella. They’ll fight it together, they’ll spend all their savings, longing to draw out each remaining moment of life, just another week to hold hands, another month. And together they’ll return in the end from the hospital, the diagnosis will be clear—from now on, only pain and suffering, but the end is known. Therefore they’ll put on a disc of beautiful music, and together they’ll get into bed and swallow a jar of pills, and nothing will ever get between Ariella and him again, they’ll lay so close, and between them only the jar, only the fumes from the exhaust, only the plastic bag that will cover their faces. Perhaps they’ll even smile in the end, fixing the other with a look overflowing with acceptance and beauty, each of them, deep in their hearts, hoping nevertheless to die first, so as not to live even a moment alone, so as not to see the eyes opposite theirs glaze over, the tongue hanging out. So as not to hear the last breath.
    First Ariella will object. This is for certain. She’ll say, I don’t want you to die with me too. I want you to remain, to be filled with joy, to fall in love again, to remember or forget me, to do whatever is best for you. And he’ll say, no. No. Years before you knew who I was at all, I thought about you. About our life together. I also thought about this moment. I decided long ago, you are my life, and without you I have nothing. Time and again they’ll have this very conversation, different versions. And when she understands that there’s no way to convince him, understands that there is no other possibility, that she can’t dissuade him, she’ll hold his hand tightly and smile a sad smile, maybe the two of them will cry, and then he’ll go to the kitchen and make her an omelet like she loves, and she’ll try to eat, but the nausea, the nausea. In the days after this she will be brave and courageous, never again will they travel silently to the oncology ward, they’ll just finish, let’s say, reading a few books they planned to read but hadn’t gotten to, just finish accumulating enough pills, and that’s all, off to bed.
    And if he’s the sick one, if his body is scanned magnetically in a search for some out of control, metastasizing intruder, if a forehead strap is wrapped around his head, packed with electrodes and conductive wires, adorning him like laurel leaves? They’ll slide him inside like a conqueror, into the guts of the rattling machine. Two weeks after this, no more, already the funeral. And people will cry and people will restrain themselves, and people will say, oh, oh, such a good man he was, why was he taken oh why. And she’ll stand among them with a secret hidden behind her expression. And before this the two of them will talk about everything, they’ll talk all about his approaching death—not like us, who look away from others’ coming deaths as though they were dog shit.
    And if he dies before this in a car crash, God forbid, if he’s cut apart and all his foul-smelling physiological secrets that were hidden until then behind his skin are spilled out, Ariella will be there to hold his hand while his pulse fades, his life running out with the beating of his treacherous heart, which until now was needed to live but