Women in Autumn by Tala Bar	Table of Contents Chapter 5 Chapter 6 part 1; part 2 appeared in issue 248.
Chapter 7: Tuesday

Tirza woke up late. Lorry had gone to the office, and she knew she was late opening the shop. She lay for some time, reflecting. What happened yesterday? Lorry had told her something, about Tiberias, and about that woman, the divorcee, what’s her name? But she knew her name well, only she did not want to express it, even in thought.

At last she got up and washed her face. She did not want to eat; she’d snatch something, later. Many times she left the house without eating. Usually she had coffee, but this time she had no energy for that either.

The day was cloudy, heavy, like Tirza’s heart. She took the bus to the new commercial center where the shop was. When she got there, she found Isaac. Good thing he had a key and did not have to wait for her, she thought. Of course, he used to own the shop, and she insisted he retain the key; but any other man might have behaved differently.

“Good morning,” she said weakly.

“Tirza, anything wrong? See how you look?”

“I’m not feeling very well,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “You should have stayed in bed — there’s nothing pressing today, no important customer or such.” He joked. Only once or twice a year there was such an important customer who would arrange a meeting at the shop for a special purchase, or to consult about some animal he or she might have bought.

“No, you know I don’t like to stay in bed. And I’m not really ill, I only have a headache, I’ll take a pill and be all right. You know what — I’ll go to the pharmacy around the corner, I’m sure they have something suitable.” Having uttered that long speech, she turned and left running, not waiting for his answer.

She did not know where she was going — certainly not to the pharmacy. Her headache was not something physical to be removed with a pill, she knew, but a mental state she was not sure how to solve. She walked and walked, first along the main street, then she turned onto another.

At last she stopped in front of a building blocking the road. Absently, she had arrived at the ‘Pink’ plant, where both her husband and his lover worked. For a long time she stood and gazed at the factory notice board. The face of a beautiful woman, unlike either Tirza or Anat, appeared on it, well made up in pink, smiling shades.

At last she mustered courage and entered through the revolving door. She barely had strength to push the door, and almost collided with a man coming out. She found herself in a spacious hall, with a huge desk inviting people to approach. She went up to it, hesitating.

“I’m Lorry Yarom’s wife and I need to see Anat Lyish,” she said in one breath in a low voice. She did not know what she should say in order to be allowed in, knew she had no power to break the invisible barrier of management.

“Go through the rear entrance of the plant and ask there,” the man told her. She turned to the rear entrance and entered an office, where she was told Anat was in her office attached to the production labs. At last, after many turns in some corridors, she reached her goal.

“Yes?” the secretary at the front office asked. Tirza paused, hesitating.

“Anat?” she asked in the end.

“What business?”

She shook her head. “Private,” she said.

“I don’t know,” the secretary said, lifting the phone.

“Never mind,” Tirza said, passed by her and entered the inner office. She stood before a large desk with papers and models on it; but she saw nothing except the well-done head, short hair dyed in dark and light color stripes, glowing mouth and smooth, pink cheeks; at last — her look sunk into the coolest gray eyes she had ever encountered.

“Ah, Tirza!” the cold voice came from between the glowing lips.

“What do you want him for?” The cry burst out of Tirza’s pale lips.

Anat shrugged. “The truth is, I don’t want him. It was good for a time, but that’s passed. You can take him back.”

“How can I take him back? He does not want me, only you!” she cried.

“So, you can’t always have what you want, you have to learn to take him the way he is. But I can tell you that you suit each other.” The shade of contempt was not lost on Tirza’s ears.

“Only because you don’t want him any more? You think you can take and throw away anything you feel like?”

“Yes!” Anat answered, forcefully. ‘I could have taught you how to do it,’ she reflected, ‘but I’m not sure you’d want to learn.’ She felt the potential in Tirza to control men’s affection no less than she did; she thought of the other woman as if she was a product to be made suitable for a purpose.

The phone rang, was cut off, and the door opened abruptly. Lorry burst in with the face of the secretary peeping behind him. “I don’t know what’s happening today, Anat! Everyone bursts in on you. I’m sorry,” the secretary apologized.

Anat drove her out of the room waving her hand. “Never mind, Rina, keep your place.” Then she turned to the man, who had grabbed at his wife’s hand and was pulling it. “What’d you want, Lorry. I thought everything was finished between us. Tirza and I are having a women’s talk in which you can have no part.”

“Don’t give me that crap! You never have women’s talk and don’t try to maneuver me! Come, Tirza, let me take you home.”

The younger woman shook his hand off her arm. “Anat is right,” she said decisively. “It’s between us, and you have nothing to say about it.”

“To Hell with both of you!” His face reddened and twisted, as he let go of his usual calm external appearance and his exemplary behavior. Neither of them had ever seen him like that, and both stared at him. In a moment he felt their astonished reaction, made an enormous effort and reassumed his usual calm expression. But he would not let go of the initial purpose of his coming. “Come, Tirza, you have nothing to do here, with that treacherous woman. Let’s go and eat something — I’m sure you haven’t had breakfast, as usual. Then I’ll take you home, or to the shop, or wherever you want.”

Tirza examined his face closely, as if she was seeing it for the first time. “No, Lorry, I don’t want you to take me anywhere. But don’t worry, nothing terrible is going to happen here, and I know everything anyway. Go back to your office and I’ll leave by myself.”

He looked at her, wondering, as if she had grown horns. Her face was calm — too calm to his taste, almost dead of all emotions. “All right,” he said, reluctantly, “but take a taxi back.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said softly, “I’ll be all right.”

At last he left, not turning toward Anat at all. Tirza turned to the woman, who continued to sit behind her table as if it was a fort.

“I think I know what you mean. I loved him and you didn’t, it’s all very simple.”

“Loved? In the past?”

“I don’t know now, I’ll have to find out what it was between us.” Tirza turned and left, passed through the entrance hall and out into the heavy day. She returned to the open, anonymous street, which had no demands on her.

She did not go back to the shop, however, but took a bus to the beach. The weather had changed, a strong wind was stirred, raising high waves; a black flag was flying over the lifeguard hut, but there were still a few dark heads floating on the frothy water, like skulls separated from their bodies.

For a long while Tirza stood and watched the raging sea; then she started to walk toward the water line, very slowly but deliberately, as if bewitched by the constant movement.

A voice near by stopped her. “Don’t I know you?” A woman walked hand in hand with a little boy, coming in her direction. The boy was well dressed against the wind, but the woman’s head was bare, her honey color hair flying in the wind.

“You came to the shop,” Tirza murmured and turned her face away. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I’ve also seen you at the beach. You sat on that bench, near Shura.”

“Shura? You’re Maya, aren’t you? You built a castle in the sand with your child. What’s his name?”

“Matan. But I don’t know yours.”

“Tirza. How’re you, Matan,” she stretched her hand to him. He took hold of it with some hesitation, and turned his face to his mother. She could not see his hair under the hat, but his eyes were a darker honey than his mother’s, their look as hesitating as his hand. “You like to walk by the sea?” Tirza asked. “Even in such weather?”

“It’s a good place to be alone, sometimes. And a very good place to form a connection with another person. Isn’t it so, Matan?”

He nodded without understanding her meaning, and she tightened her hold on him. Suddenly she kneeled on the sand before him. “Matan, Matan, don’t think I don’t love you! If you really knew! But you’re small yet. Later, you’ll understand, and perhaps forgive me as well.”

“Maya!” Tirza called, wondering at the woman’s strange behavior.

“I’m sorry,” she said, rising to her feet and shaking the sand from her knees. “I think we all should go back to town — this place stirs too many wild feelings and uncontrollable thoughts. Don’t you think?”

Silently, Tirza nodded. “You’re right. I’ll go take the bus in the next street. Where’re you going?”

“I came in a car. It’s not hard to find parking here, even on a weekday. Come, Matan, let’s go home and have some hot cocoa.”

* * *

At the flat, Tirza stretched on the bed in her robe. Lorry came home earlier than usual. “What is it, Tirza? Are you ill?”

She shook her head. “Get up, then, let’s make supper, let’s enjoy life a little bit,” he tried to encourage her, pulling her off the bed by the hand. “Put some socks on, it’s cold enough, almost winter,” he sounded solicitous. “Shall I light the gas heater? It’ll make you warmer.” He was babbling, trying to cheer her up. ‘He had not done it for a long time,’ she thought, ‘too busy with Anat.’ She was taken over again by bitterness.

Just the same, she put on warmer clothes and went with him to the kitchen. Silently, they prepared supper together, ate and washed the dishes, returned to the living room and watched television. At last, he had enough.

“What do you want, Tirza? I did leave her, I’m yours now. I’ve come back to you and you’re not happy! So tell me, what do you want?”

“What do I want?” the dam broke at last. “I want all that to have never happened! That there had never been Anat, that you’d never betrayed me, that you had not lived without me, that you had not wanted something I couldn’t give you!” she shouted, her voice getting hoarse. Her tears burst out, flowed down her cheeks, burned her skin, filled her mouth with salt.

“How could you? What haven’t I done for you? I loved you so much and you ruined it. You destroyed that innocent love, and what do I have now? How can I look at you as I had done before? Before you betrayed me, before I’d known about her. All that innocence, Damn you!

“I wish I knew how to curse you! I wish your face would turn black and your eyes blind and your body shake and you wouldn’t know where you were! But I know nothing! Your naive, foolish wife. Even a child I can’t give you! I can’t have love! I can’t have a child! I can’t have anything!”

“But I’m here, you silly girl. You can have me, as once you wanted.” He pulled her onto his lap, as in the days they would make love on the couch, on the floor, anywhere that came to their minds. She tolerated his kisses, his caresses. He stripped her, rubbed his body against hers, opened her legs, and she lay there passive, neither answering his movements nor rejecting him. Her body accepted his easily, without pain and without enthusiasm, without desire. Even when finished, he continued to hug and kiss her, as if not noticing her passivity, as if everything was good, as it used to be, before he had met Anat and fallen in love with her.

Proceed to Chapter 8...

Copyright © 2007 by Tala Bar