Between the Lines

This evening, after they left.

Their arrival: she entered first, in her hand a bag, and in the bag a container, and in the container food she had prepared for him—that he hadn't had time to eat before the session. She placed it on the table before her as one places a document, and did not touch it again. And for the entire hour that we spoke, the container stood between us, its steam lightly fogging the glass from within. I made a note of it to myself and said nothing about it.

And this is their story, as it is openly told:

He was an orphan. Knocked about between institutions, from home to home and from yard to yard, in the way of a child who has no one to come pick him up in the evening. And when she came and saw him—she immediately jumped in. She didn't weigh it, didn't check, didn't ask for advice. Jumped like a person who jumps into the water upon seeing someone drown, who does not calculate at that moment how deep it is.

And she jumped in to protect him, and to make him a new childhood, and to do so with much love. And that is what she has been doing from then until today: feeding, covering, making sure he sleeps, remembering what he likes and what he doesn't like, arranging the world around him the way one arranges a room for a child who has arrived in the middle of the night. And in this there is not a trace of falsehood. This woman truly loves, and her love is very great.

And because her love is great—love upends the natural order, and she did not see.

She did not see the dark side.

That in his business there are all sorts of elements that are not done on the straight and narrow. And I do not know their details nor do I seek to know them, for it is not my profession and not my role—but I recognize their scent. Speech has a scent, and it rises from the room, and she sits within it and smells nothing, and not because her senses are dull. On the contrary, her senses are very fine. But all her senses have been directed to one side: she smells if he is tired, and if he has not eaten, and if he did not sleep at night, and if something hurts him and he doesn't say. All these she knows through a wall. And only one thing she does not smell, and it is the one thing he always carries on him.

And what I see, and do not say:

It is good for him to wear two hats.

A good boy at home, and a bad boy in business. And let the reader of this notebook not be mistaken—he is not split and he does not suffer from this all day long. There are hours of deliberation, and they are not many; and immediately after them he is comfortable with this and comfortable with that. A person who has two hats on the coat rack is not sick. Such a person is enjoying himself.

And this is the thing I have gotten to the bottom of:

For him, the bad place is an intimate place.

The street language he knows from there, from before, from those yards and institutions. There he learned his first words in the world, and there he learned for the first time that he was worth something, and there he had people who understood him with half a word without him having to explain himself and without him having to be good. And this is what is called intimacy for such a person: a place where one does not need to strive to be worthy.

And it is hard for him to part from there. And anyone who thinks that a person parts from that for a good woman—has never seen a child who grew up in the yard.

And since it is so, it turns out that all his intimacy is poured out there, outside, during the day, in conversations that have no witnesses. And what arrives home in the evening—arrives already empty. Not bad, heaven forbid: it arrives pleasant, it arrives polite, it arrives grateful, it arrives a good boy who eats what she has prepared for him and thanks her. And this is precisely what is missing, and therefore she has no name to give it.

And therefore she says what she says, and she is right in every word and does not know what she is right about.

She says: He doesn't talk to me enough.

And says: I feel that he is not whole with me, and I don't know what it is.

And she looked at me as she said this with the look of a person asking for confirmation that she is not going out of her mind. For everything is good, and he is faithful to her, and loves her, and provides, and cares, and does not raise his voice. And a woman who has nothing to complain about and she complains—ends up blaming herself. She said to me, half-jokingly: Maybe I'm just a woman who needs too much.

And here I sat and said nothing, and I do not know if this silence was professionalism or cowardice.

For her intuition works perfectly. She perceives correctly, is precise in her direction, points to the right room—and has no key. And when there is no key, a person interprets the lock as if it were in themself.

And that smile.

The one that happened at the end, when with a third question I passed too close, and immediately turned to another matter. He understood. Understood that I had understood, and knew that I had retreated of my own will.

And he was not startled, and did not blush, and did not shrink. He smiled at me a very small smile, lasting about half a breath, and no one in the world would have noticed it but me. And it held no insolence, and it held no threat, and it held something worse than both: it held warmth. The smile of two people standing by the same bonfire, who have nothing to say to each other, for everything is already known.

A smile that says: We both know, and you will not tell her.

And I, who am not a judge but a translator, received in that moment a gift I had not asked for. He did not buy me with money or with a promise. He did something much simpler—he included me. He brought me, with a single smile, into that intimate room of his, a place to which she had never been invited. And from that second on, she has a husband who has a secret, and she has a therapist who has the same secret, and she has nothing.

And when they got up to leave, she returned the container to his bag and said he should eat in the car.

My dilemma, in writing, so that I can see it with my own eyes:

If I open the matter between them—he will become vile to her at that point. And that will be the moment when the child she saved, whom she fed, for whom she built a new childhood—will stand before her with the other face on his face. And I do not know if such a love can tolerate such a sight. There are loves that break precisely there.

And if I do not open it—I find myself preserving the quiet of the room, and letting her continue to search for the flaw in herself, and to continue saying 'maybe I need too much,' and to continue feeding half a person whole portions and wondering why he is not sated. And it turns out that her lack, for which she has no name—I am one of two people who know its name, and I do not say.

Both directions exact a price; I only choose the coin. And here, this time, I cannot say that the coin is mine.

What I can do, and need no one's permission for:

Not to touch his business. To touch the yard.

To ask him to tell her—not me—one small thing from those days. Not a story of orphanhood and not a display of pain; just the opposite, something good. Who was the first person who understood him with half a word. How they spoke there. What he was good at.

For if a little of that warmth enters the house—she will finally have something to touch, and will feel that he has become whole with her, and will not know how much she has gained. And if he refuses—then the refusal itself is said in the room, in her presence, and she will see with her own eyes that there is a door and that it is closed. And a woman who has seen a closed door no longer looks for the flaw in herself.

And what I did at the end of the session, and I do not know if I did right:

I did not touch his business and did not hint at it and did not point a finger at it. I put down my pen, and turned to him, and spoke to him openly, as one person to another, without that wisdom of rooms in which we wrap ourselves.

I told him: I ask one thing of you, and I am not asking it with cunning. I am not asking you to tell me anything. I am asking you to tell her.

I said: Tell her one story. Only one and no more. A story about something not good that you did as a child.

And I added immediately, before he had time to do with his face what he does with it: Not something that falls under the law. Don't bring me accounts. A small, ugly thing, from the things a child does in the yard and no one sees, and you remember it to this day and do not know why you remember it. Something that you suppose—you, and not I—that if she heard it she would be a little ashamed of you.

I said: A little. I am not asking you to throw yourself before her.

And behold, as I spoke, that quiet that has no rustle fell in the room. And she too stopped moving in her chair, for she, in her body's wisdom, understood before she understood in her head that something had been opened here.

And he looked at me, and he no longer had that smile of the two standing by the bonfire. For the first time in the whole session I saw a man who did not have two hats in his hand, but one, and he did not know where to put it.

And he asked me: Why this.

And I told him the truth, for I have no other merchandise: Because all her days she has loved one child who has no flaw. And a child who has no flaw is not a child—he is a picture.

And you know.

I said: I am not asking that you open the house for her. I am asking for one small crack.

And so I said to him, and I will not forget this image that rolled off my tongue on its own, and I do not know where it came from: A wall that was built with no crack in it—looks stronger than all, but has no breath, and all the moisture is trapped inside and it crumbles from the side that is not seen. But a wall that has one thin crack—a little air enters it, and the house breathes, and not only that: the crack is the only place through which the resident can look outside without opening the door.

And what I seek to achieve by this, I write down for myself:

That she will see, for once, another face of his—a small one, chosen by his own hands, in a size he can bear—and she will not die from it. And from the moment she does not die from it, he will know, in his flesh and not in his ears, that it is possible to be ugly before her and remain loved. And this is the whole thing he never had, not in the yard and not in an institution and not in any bed he slept in: that they would see the bad in him and not send him to another place.

And that she, for her part, will finally encounter one place inside him that does not need her. And this will hurt her. And from this pain intimacy begins, for there is no intimacy between a rescuer and one who is rescued—there is only debt.

And as for the dark side of which I do not speak: it is not his business that I seek to open, nor am I a court of law. But a man who knows how to say before his wife 'I did an ugly thing and was ashamed'—has already laid a small foundation for the floor on which it will be possible to stand one day even with the heavy things. And one who does not know how to say the small thing, will never say the big thing, and all the questions I ask him about the big thing will yield nothing but a smile.

Homework:

For him—one story, this week, at home, not here. Not on a holiday evening and not during a fight. And to tell it to the end, and not to laugh in the middle.

For her—three things I told her and asked that she repeat after me, and she did: Not to pity. Not to fix. And not to tell him 'but you were a child'. I told her: You are a great expert at sweetening. This time, do not sweeten. If the desire rises in you to hug him in the middle—stay in your place and listen to the end. A hug in the middle is the most beautiful way to tell a person 'enough, I don't want to hear'.

Prognosis: There is a will in him. I saw it in the second he asked 'why this,' for he asked it seriously and not with cunning. If he brings a real story—there is a home here. If he brings a defensive and polished story, one of those told in interviews—he will know that I know, and I will be silent, and we will begin from the beginning.

And when they got up to leave, she returned the container to his bag, as was her way, and said he should eat in the car.

And at the door he stopped and turned his head back and said to me, in a half-voice: I have a few of those.

I said: One.

And he left.