The Lover Read Online Free Page A

phone down, hurry to Daddy, take the receiver from the pillow and put it back in its place. If only I had a fraction of his ability to sleep.
    “Go to sleep …” he says suddenly.
    “Yes, right away … Mommy hasn’t come in yet.”
    “She’ll be home soon. Don’t wait up for her. You’ll be worn out in the morning.”
    Back to my room. I start to sort it out, to turn over the day, scraps, feelings, words and laughter, all are like a thin layer of rubbish that I gather up and throw into the basket. I start tidying up the bed, airing it, I find Osnat’s purse and a tampon in a nylon bag that must be Tali’s, she carries it around with her everywhere . At last the room has some sort of shape. I put out the main light, switch on the bedside lamp. I pick up the book on the Age of Enlightenment and get into bed with it, to prepare for the test. The letters go blurred, my head goes heavy, my breathing heavy too, the moment of grace, grab it, wonderful, I’m asleep.
    And then Mommy arrives, her footsteps so quick on the stairs sound as if she’s returning from an orgy, not a teachers’ meeting. The door opens. At once I call out, “Mommy?” She comes into my room, her coat is wet, a stack of papers under her arm, her face grey, she’s very tired.
    “Asleep yet?”
    “Not me.”
    “What’s happened?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Then go to sleep.”
    “Mommy?”
    “Not now … you can see I’m exhausted.”
    Lately that’s been her constant refrain. A terrible exhaustion. You can’t talk to her, she’s always busy, as if she were running the whole world. Now her quick footsteps in the house, moving about in the dim light, taking something out of the fridge, undressing in the bathroom, tries to shower but turns it off immediately. Quickly I switch off the light so she won’t come inand shout at me for using all the hot water. She goes into the dark bedroom, Daddy mutters something, she answers, and they are silent.
    A quiet married life –
    The last light in the house has gone out. I close my eyes, still hoping. Everything is quiet. My mind at rest, my school bag packed, the house locked, the shutters closed. The street is quiet. Everything is right for sleep and maybe I really have slept for a minute or two and then time passes, and I understand that I’m really not asleep, that the little flame burning down inside the soul won’t leave me alone. I begin to stir restlessly and the strange wakefulness gets stronger. I turn the pillow over, change position every quarter of an hour, then every few minutes. An hour passes. The luminous hands touch midnight. That’s it. You might just as well get up, my dear. Poor Dafi, it’s a white night and there’s no point in fighting it, get up and wake up.
     
    The path of light on sleepless nights. First the small light beside the bed, then the main light in the bedroom, the light in the passage, and the white light in the kitchen and last of all the light inside the fridge.
    Midnight feast. What use is a diet during the day if at night you gobble up four hundred calories on the quiet? A slice of cake, cheese, a piece of chocolate and the last of the milk. Then, heavy and drowsy, I sink down on the sofa in the dark sitting room, facing the big window, opposite me is a mighty ship, a brightly lit palace, under the mountain on the invisible sea. A wonderful vision of people awake. I go to fetch a pillow and a blanket, I come back and the ship has already vanished, she’s gone before you even realize she’s moving.
    Once I managed to get some sleep on the sofa in the sitting room, but not tonight. The upholstery scratches me. I lie there for a quarter of an hour, half an hour. I reach out for the radio. What language is this? Greek? Turkish? Yugoslav? The songs are nice. And the disc jockey has a sexy voice, chattering away. Old women are talking to him on the phone, their voices shaky, they make him laugh, he’s in fits of laughter, quite uninhibited. I almost join in.