Bliss by Ronit Matalon

Author:Ronit Matalon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

They gave her away when Mims turned one. Michel held her and stroked her dull fur, his face a mixture of tenderness and repulsion. “Why not, after all?” he deliberated out loud.

“Take her.” Udi eagerly stuffed her brush, flea powder, shampoo, and a few remaining packets of food into a plastic bag. “Take her now.”

Sarah chain-smoked silently. “You don’t have to be so enthusiastic about it,” she said.

“Why not?” Udi was angry. “I couldn’t stand this cat from the moment you brought her home. And now Mims is helping me get rid of her, right Mimsaleh?” he cooed at the baby as he sat gravely in his infant seat with his three chubby chins. His body took up the whole seat.

“I take him if you let me,” Michel said in broken English as he leaned over the baby and pinched the pinkish rolls of fat around his wrists. He waved the blanket fringes in front of Mims’s fascinated round eyes. Mims twisted his nose a little and then a grin spread over his face. “Tickle?” Michel laughed.

“You need your own baby, Michel,” Sarah said. “Someone you can play with every day.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t make that joke.” He pulled up a chair and sat opposite her, scrutinizing her appearance. “You look awful. Disaster.”

“I know.” She averted her gaze and smiled weakly, helplessly. “What can I do?”

“You can stop feeling sorry for yourself, Mademoiselle. Get up in the morning and put on a brave face.”

“We love her just the way she is.” Udi came over and pressed her scraggly head against the side of his stomach, covering her small face with his hand. “Just like she is, no face, no nothing.”

“Oy, oy, oy.” Michel sighed, cocked his head at an angle, and squinted at them.

Later, we walked along the promenade, eating ice cream and trying in vain to find a vacant spot on the wooden benches. We finally sat down on one of the cement planters. “It looks very bad, this business with the officer,” Michel said.

For years, he had insisted on calling Udi “the officer,” both to his face and behind his back; he considered it an affectionate tease. Udi explained awkwardly, “Not everyone who serves in the army is an officer, Michel. I’m just a medic, not an officer or anything special.”

Michel found the gravity of Udi’s expression even more entertaining. “No, of course you’re not,” he would reply, his face widening into a contagious smile that lit up his eyes, which revealed their many shades of brown.

Now he carefully nibbled the bottom of his ice cream cone. “The officer can’t see what’s going on,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She’s suffocating, Ofra, can’t you see she’s suffocating?”

I could. At times she would suddenly grab my hand and squeeze tight. “I can’t breathe. I’m out of air.” During one such episode she lay down on the couch, then stood up and grasped her chest. I was terrified. “I’m taking you to the doctor,” I said. She stomped her foot impatiently.

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