Woman of Valor by Lihi Lapid

Author:Lihi Lapid
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789652296405
Publisher: Gefen Publishing House

14

Two, the male and his female.

(Genesis 7:2)

The prince arrives home from another hard day at work, this time early enough, while the heirs are still awake, and he tells them a story, and then joins the princess in the living room. They sit together. The house is sparkling clean, and she’s prepared a delicious meal, and they chat a bit, for the first time in a long while. He tells her what happened to him today at work, and who he saw, and what sort of problems he came across. And she’s so happy, even though she isn’t familiar with most of the names, and even though she doesn’t have an opinion concerning most of his dilemmas; she’s just happy that they’re talking and sharing.

Then she tells him about her day. About something that the preschool teacher said about the heir, something that someone told her this afternoon in the park, and about the lady who stood on line at the supermarket, in the express line, with two items more than the limit. “The nerve,” she says to the prince. “Wasn’t it rude of her?”

And he’s silent.

He maintains that silence of his. A silence that she also maintains sometimes. And these silences, which settle between their sentences, stretch and take over, marking the widening gap between them. The gap between what interests them, between what they need, what they want, what they give. A silent testimony that he isn’t really interested in what is happening to her, in what she’s going through, and he isn’t really interested in sharing his world with her, and she isn’t genuinely interested in his world. This silence has always annoyed her, but this time it’s different. Maybe because she isn’t tired, because she snatched a few hours of sleep in the morning, she isn’t annoyed this time. This time, something else happens to her. Suddenly she sees herself.

After years during which she has examined the world only through the lens of what seems important to her – her difficulties, her efforts to make her little family perfect and their children wonderful – suddenly she sees herself as though she’s looking in from the outside. She sees herself through different eyes. Suddenly she’s aware of herself, sprawled on the couch. How she no longer makes sure that her chin is coquettishly extended, and how she’s neglected her hair like never before, how she’s wearing rags, and without even checking, she knows that she has hair on her legs.

And not only does she suddenly see herself, she also hears herself. Hears what she was talking about, what her life revolves around, how her world has narrowed down to their neighborhood, and who said what to whom, and that the highlight of her day was that rude lady in the supermarket. (Actually, there was another highlight when she found that soup pot she’s been wanting at a crazy discount.) And it frightens her. She imagines a young her, a twenty-something-year-old, sitting with them right now, with all her passion, and thinks what her younger self would have to say if she were looking at her now.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.