Between the Lines

They sat before me, as is their way, and I do not know if there is a phrase in the world truer for anyone than this one is for these two. For week after week they come in in the very same order: he first, and the folder in his hand, and she behind him, with nothing. And in that alone everything was handed to me, and I did not understand it until today.

And he set the folder on his knees, and opened it, and took a page out of it.

And he said: I want you to see something.

And he showed me a printed page, and at the top of it was written Summary of Meeting, and beneath it numbered clauses, and at the bottom of it two signatures. His and hers.

I said: You sign.

He said: We agree on things. And afterward I write down what we agreed, and we read it together, and I ask her do you have comments, and if she has no comments she signs. It's not a contract. It's just so it'll be clear.

And he said "It's not a contract" in the voice of a man who brings the cure before the blow, who knew well how the thing sounds in a stranger's ears, and he had not come to ask me whether this is normal. He had come to show me evidence.

I said: And what happens afterward.

He said: Afterward it's like it never happened.

And he took out another page, and another page. And he did not lay them on the table one on top of another the way one lays down papers, but arranged them before me one beside one, as a peddler spreads his wares on a rug, until the table was full. A full folder it was, and in it pages in descending order, and a date in the corner of each one, in the handwriting of a man whose hand does not tremble.

And beyond this, he said, he is not content with a signature.

For once he saw that the signature does not hold, he began to ask her out loud. He says to her tell me in your own words what we agreed on, and she says it in her own words, very well and with complete precision, and sometimes she even adds a detail that he himself had forgotten. And he says to her you're committing, and she says I commit. And he says to her say the word, and she says the word. And that doesn't work either.

And in this he is broken more than in anything, and rightly. For about a paper one can say she did not read it properly, and about a signature one can say she signed in haste and hurried off somewhere else. But a woman who said with her own mouth I commit, and looked into his eyes while she said it, and said it in a clear voice and without being asked twice—and the next day there is no trace of it in the world. Not a trace and not half a trace and not a shred.

And in this there is something I do not know how to say in the professional language, and I say it in my own: this is not like a man who forgot a thing. A man who forgot has an empty place in him afterward, and when you remind him he is startled and fills it. And here there is no empty place at all. The floor is smooth. As if nothing had ever stood there.

And when he confronts her with this, she does not deny it. She tells.

Listen to what happened.

And at once a whole story rises in the room, and in it her sister who called at an hour when no one calls unless something has happened, and a child who had a fever of thirty-eight point two, and a woman from work who said something in the corridor and it isn't clear what she meant, and rain that fell that day and it was impossible to go out, and a phone that fell in water two months ago and no longer rings properly. And every single detail in it is true, and I have never once caught her in a lie—and I testify to this, for several times I checked myself, and always the rain was rain and the fever was fever.

Only the whole story, with all its truths, is nothing but a cloud.

And the cloud does not lie. There is not one drop of falsehood in it. It only covers, and you cannot catch it in your hand and say to it here you are. And when a man stands below and points and says but there was sun here before—they laugh at him, for what evidence does he have, and after all there is nothing in the sky but cloud, and cloud is the way of the world.

And all that hour I sat and understood one thing, and only at the end of the session did it become clear to me that it is the complete opposite of what I had understood.

For he built himself a world whose order is this: commitment is the ground, and love is a recommendation.

The ground one owes. Without it one does not stand at all, and does not sleep at night, and does not know where one person ends and the second begins. And the recommendation it is very fine to fulfill, if the hour allows and if there is nothing more urgent. And he never said to her that he does not love her, God forbid, and I believe that he loves her, and she too believes it—only if you asked him suddenly, without preparation, what this house stands on, he would not point to her. He would point to the folder.

And at night, when he lies awake—and he lies awake a great deal—he does not reckon whether he is loved. He reckons whether it was kept.

And she built herself a world whose order is the complete opposite, and she did not build it at all, for she does not build a thing. She was born inside it.

With her, commitment dwells in no clause and in no signature and in no word said with a full mouth and in a clear voice. And all those words—committing, promising, we agreed—are with her a kind of fine courtesy that people practice with one another, the way one says goodbye and how are you, and no one expects you to bring evidence for how are you.

And even so there is in her one commitment. Greater than the whole folder and than all twenty-one pages and than all the signatures she has signed in her life. And she knows nothing about it. She never promised it, and no one asked it of her, and if they brought a paper before her and said to her sign here—she would look at them in wonder and ask what it is they are signing about.

She is committed to loving him.

And she is not aware of it at all. And this is the only commitment in the world that is not broken, because it is not seen, and because no one swears to it, and because it is impossible to forget a thing you do not know you are carrying.

And from the moment I saw this—I put the pages down out of my hand, and I did not straighten them, and I said to him: Ask her something.

He said: What.

I said: Ask her if she's committed to loving you.

And he looked at me like a man who had been offered to weigh water with a ruler. And he said: That's not a question.

I said: Ask.

He said: It's not a question, because there's no answer to it you can check.

I said: Ask.

And he turned to her, unwillingly, in the voice of a man reading a clause off a page that is not his: Are you committed to loving me?

And she said: Yes.

Without a story. Without a sister who called and without rain and without a phone that fell in water. Yes, at once, without that half second that every person has before he answers. Like a man asked what his name is.

I said to him: Ask again. Differently.

And he asked: Even when I'm annoying you?

And she said: Yes.

I said: Ask her also when you're angry at her.

And he did not want to. I saw that he did not want to, and that it was not because the question was hard for him, but because he already knew what the answer would be, and knew that he had nothing to do with it, and that she would bring something down in him.

And he asked, and it was no longer a clause, and his voice slipped a little in the middle: And when I'm angry at you?

And she said: Yes.

And she even added, and they had not asked her to add, and it was not an hour in which one adds: Always.

And there came into the room that quiet which has no rustle in it, and I hear it only once or twice a year.

And I said to him, and I do not know whether he heard me then: This answer you can get from her at any hour and in any condition whatsoever. Wake her at three in the morning out of a deep sleep and ask her, and she will answer you yes without opening her eyes. Ask her in the middle of a fight, after you have slammed a door, while she is crying—and she will answer you yes. Ask her in twenty years, when you will not remember what day she gave birth and where she put the keys—and she will answer you yes.

This woman does not forget one thing in the world. One. And no cloud in the world ever covers it.

And he said: But it's not the same thing.

And I said: No. It's not the same thing. It's much more.

And he did not answer, and he had no strength to answer. And I saw him sitting there with the folder on his knees and holding the edges of the pages with both hands, like a man holding the edges of a coat in the wind, who is not holding the garment but himself.

And this is the thing I mean to say to him at the next session, and I do not know if I will be able, and I do not know if I am permitted, and I do not know if he will bear it:

Your exactness is not exactness. It is your last line of defense.

And it was not built because your wife forgets. It was built many years before you met her, with those who raised you, and I do not know what happened there and I have not asked yet and I will ask with very great care. Only a man to whom no one ever showed how much power love has—has no choice but to build himself lines.

For the line is the only thing in the world that can be verified. You said, you did, you marked it, it's finished. It has a beginning and it has an end and it has two ends to it, and you can lay a finger on it and say this far. And a child who grew up in a place where they do not know what will be in the evening—will make himself lines out of whatever comes to his hand, and will arrange the shoes at an angle, and will count the stairs, and when he grows up will arrange pages in a folder with a date in the corner.

And love is never verified. It has no end you can lay a finger on, and it has no day on which it is finished, and you cannot bring evidence about it in a court of law. And therefore you cannot give it weight. And therefore you write it at the bottom of the page, below, under recommendations.

And all those twenty-one pages are nothing but one request, written in them in invisible script, between the lines and on the back of the paper: tell me in something that can be measured that I'm worth something.

And she answers you this every single day, and not in something that can be measured. And therefore you do not hear.

And as for the thing that happened today in the room, I write it down as it is and I do not beautify it: I do not know if anything will change in the pages, and I imagine not, and I am also not certain that it needs to change. A man will take his folder home, and will arrange today's page in it, and will write a date in the corner.

But a man who heard in his own voice the question and when I'm angry at you, and was answered yes, and afterward always—already has one thin crack running through him.

That love spoils the line.

And this is the thing he fears all his days, and rightly he fears, for he is not mistaken at all: she comes to the straight line, the straight and measured line marked at both its ends, and bends it slowly, slowly, without permission and without notice in advance, until it becomes a circle. And a circle has no beginning and has no end and has no first clause and no last clause, and whoever stands inside it cannot say this far.

And you cannot get a man's signature on a circle.

You can only sit inside it. And be afraid. And sit and entwine, and join, and be truly, truly.