The Others by Sarah Blau (best ereader for academics TXT) 📗

and “I never felt this way before.” As the love burned in his fair eyes, I felt that something inside me shrivelled up and died.

All my feelings disappeared at once, like a plug violently yanked out of its socket.

Even in real time, while it was happening, I was already thinking: Sheila Heller, you’re batshit, you’re fucking nuts, what’s going on with you? It’s Neria! Your Neria! Your prince charming, the subject of your elaborate pursuit, the man you imagined, even if just for a fleeting second, as the father of your children. Here he is, sitting right next to you, confessing his undying love! What’s happening to you, Sheila? Get your act together this moment, you basket case!

Neria continued gushing, I think he even used the hair-raising term “love of my life,” while I sat there, immobile, staring out the car window. I felt like a doll, devoid of emotion.

And now he’s standing in front of me with his Taliunger, both silent.

Taliunger is boring into my eyes, searching for something inside them, and I feel like saying: I’m not interested in your husband, just like I wasn’t interested in him twenty years ago. The only person I’m interested in is me. But she pre-empts with, “After so many years, we all meet again!”, cracking a big, smarmy smile.

“No, not all of us,” Neria hisses, and his slurred speech indicates that the empty wine glass in his hand wasn’t his first. “Someone’s missing.”

“Who are you talking about?” I ask, although I know perfectly well who.

“Queen bee, mother of all bitches,” he says, “Dina fucking Kaminer. I can’t begin to describe how happy it makes me to know that someone went and drained her, just like she drained your minds.”

“Drained her?” a familiar voice cracks through the eerie silence.

“Drained who?” It’s Ronit, wafting in out of nowhere, her cape dragging behind her, like a bat with a broken wing.

“Her, that bitch, Kaminer, she was drained. Exsanguinated. Didn’t leave a drop of blood in her!” he exclaims, face flushed, drunk grin. Neria Grossman is brimming with blood and something else. A primal emotion. It’s hatred.

11

A VEIL OF SILENCE falls over the entire living room, and it seems we have all transformed into frozen dolls, standing in a circle around Neria, who’s still smiling and shaking his head. “Drained,” he repeats.

“How do you know that?”

That detail didn’t appear in any written account. I know because I scoured every article. I assumed she was strangled, and I’m almost certain that’s what was indicated in the papers. When I mentioned it to Micha in passing, he didn’t deny it. But he didn’t confirm it either.

Dina’s image flashes before me, baby doll in her arms, red letters marring that high, regal porcelain-white forehead, even whiter now that it was sapped of its blood. Dina of all people, Dina who had more blood inside her than anyone else.

“I have a friend on the police force,” Neria says.

“What friend? Who?” Taliunger asks and immediately falls silent; a drop of red wine trickles down her glass onto one of the white armchairs, the fabric ravenously absorbing it.

“A friend, what does it matter who. He knew we went to college together, so he told me.” Taliunger, who’s already fishing a tissue out of her handbag to save the armchair, freezes again when he says, “He asked me to keep it a secret.”

“Well, he definitely told the right person,” I remark.

“It’s the booze,” he slurs. “Alcohol and I don’t get along too well.” He looks at me as if waiting for confirmation.

It’s true. Once again the images from that Purim party loop through my mind, Thrump, thrump! Dina, impossibly tall in her flowing cape, and Ronit, Naama and me, her forever faithful entourage, and Dina’s hands beating the tambourine, loud, loud, louder. And Neria, drunk, crying, angry. Children don’t cry.

“That bitch deserved what she got,” he almost yells, and this finally jolts Taliunger out of her frozen stupor, and she drags him away, like any good little wifey with even a grain of common sense in her head would have done the moment her husband opened such a mouth.

“Did you know Dina Kaminer too?” It’s that quasi-recognizable actress, the incontinence star, and she injects her question with more drama with an appalled, “It’s just awful, awful what happened to her.”

“Yes, yes, awful!” A few other voices chime in, and the newly formed choir enthuses, “And that baby they glued to her?” “Dreadful!” “Horrendous!” “Disgraceful!” “Bone-chilling!” “Where were the police?”

“And for what reason?” It’s that actress again. “So not everyone wants kids, why is that so offensive?” Now she waits for our approval, but the choir falls into silence.

“Look, don’t think for a moment that I’m justifying murder,” a round-faced guy joins in, and you just know that any moment he’s going to do exactly that – justify murder, “but with all due respect, I think there’s something selfish about choosing not to have children, and that Kaminer woman promoted that agenda quite aggressively.”

“What agenda?” the actress asks, taking a step closer to him, “The agenda that says it’s okay to be who you want to be?”

I observe the unfolding scene with boredom. Here we go again.

“The agenda of thinking only about yourself and the hell with your country!” The man with the pudgy baby face raises his voice, at which his wife presses against him and places a maternal hand on his shoulder. “Where do you think we’d be if everyone made that choice?” he laments. “Look who’s procreating around here, only the Arabs and the Haredim, so take some responsibility, it won’t kill you!”

A shadow passes over the actress’s face. “I’m not going to have a baby for the country’s sake.”

“It’s not for the country’s sake, it’s for your own! It’ll be good for you to think of someone other than yourself for once!”

“I think I know what’s good for me!”

“Well, with that attitude, what’s the point?!”

“You’re a guest at the home of someone who happens