FIGS

Dana G. Peleg - All Rights Reserved

            She woke with a start on Friday morning. The room was already flooded with bright sunlight, and the cat was meowing hysterically behind the door. She glanced at the clock: it was nine-thirty. She had tons of things to do. It was her turn to clean the apartment, she knew the bathtub would get only a quick wipe-down again, and her fastidious roommate would make some comment, as usual. The laundry was already piled up in the hamper. But above all, she had to find time to buy figs for the jam she wanted to make for the Sabbath meal she was invited to.

            She had come up with the idea the day before, when she had noticed out of the corner of her eye, from the bus window, a tiny fig stand attended by a Palestinian woman close to the entrance of the marketplace. That purple, which perhaps belonged to a different fruit anyway, did something to her. She could almost taste the subtle preserves of last autumn, when everything had started, but since she had to go to one of her group meetings and could not get off the bus, she had suppressed the desires the ripe fruit aroused in her.

            Quick calculation: an hour to clean the apartment, how much longer would it take for errands, phone calls and the rest of the shopping? In a note left on her table, her roommate reminded her to buy fruits and vegetables, and she could sense the underlying scolding for her always buying prepackaged food and never cooking. She brushed away the bothersome feeling, fed the cat and, having done that, looked looked for the recipe, one of Nira Russo’s that she had found a little over a year ago, at the end of August, on the pages of a respectable newspaper: apples, preserving spice, stick cinnamon, dry red wine, sugar and, of course, figs. A confection of figs and apples in wine. To her surprise, she remembered everything except the quantities.

            She looked at the soft-lined illustration accompanying the recipe, which was what had tugged at her heart in the first place. For ten days it had been stuck to the refrigerator with an ugly black magnet until she found the opportunity to prepare it. That was exactly a year ago, when she had decided to throw a Saturday night dinner party in honor of a new girl who had recently joined the group. In fact, that was how the whole story had started.

It was late, and she collected herself, put the recipe on the refrigerator again and copied its ingredients onto the note that her roommate had left her. She decided to put off washing the floor until after making the jam. Impatiently she waited in the long line at the post office, then rushed to the open-air market. It was already after eleven.

            The Palestinian woman with the figs was not there. Maybe it was the same woman, but the little stand now displayed lustrous purple onions, for which she had absolutely no desire. Actually, her roommate had asked her to buy some. The Palestinian woman, clothed in a black dress with traditional embroidery on her bosom overflowing to her stomach, cupped a few onions in her brown palm and defiantly flourished them in front of her face. She looked at them, took them and handed over the money, wondering what these women wore on fancier occasions. There was an unexpected, almost proud, opulence to the embroidered dress, amidst the asphalt and grime that sullied the market streets, the cheap clothes hanging on ropes for display, and the cardboard signs proclaiming in inarticulate language the real or fictitious distress of the poor souls sitting behind them.

            She entered the main street of the market, her eyes skimming the colorful stands. Summer fruit was still for sale; it was a heat wave, heavy and dusty at the beginning of September, before the holidays. She bought most of the groceries, but no figs were to be found there, and she trudged through forgotten alleyways inundated by an impossible mishmash of odors. At one entranceway her eyes, then her hand, coveted plums purplish in shape and color. At the next stand, fish hung with gaping mouths, dripping the last of their life force into a filthy plastic bucket. She was overcome by disgust. In another place she almost slipped on someone’s discarded mango seed, and kicked it aside in horror. Deep as she went into the market, she did not find the figs she sought. There were eggplants and yams, radishes, plums and persimmons, and every shade of purple-black-red that Mother Nature could produce. Only figs were not to be found. “Tangerines, now in season!” yelled one vendor, and she looked strangely and scornfully at the small, unripe fruit. Discouraged, she picked her way back, pondering what to bring instead of those jars of preserves, which had lasted until Succoth.

            Longing for the autumn and winter of last year overwhelmed her. At Succoth they had traveled to Acre, and slept it her parents’ house in Haifa. When she woke up one morning and saw her friend’s face, a thin strand of hair laying across it, her long thumb protruding from her clenched fist, close to her mouth, like a little girl just weaned from thumb-sucking, she had been flooded with heat. There was something so sweet about her, at odds with the leather jacket, the nose ring and the rose tattooed between her breasts, the existence of which she had not even known before then. She gazed at her for a long time, until those eyes opened and a smile unfolded across them. “Good morning,” she whispered.

            It had taken her a while to understand, to connect the sensations with the feelings and the feelings with the words, syllables, vowels and consonants that she probably did not dare express out loud. True, the word “Lesbian’ was already a part of her. She had been attached to it ever since she had acknowledged herself, sometime at the end of high school, before the army, in the period when she was desperately seeking that word everywhere. To the point that, more than once, while scanning the names of books or the witty headlines of articles, deceived by similarly-appearing words, she was disappointed to find herself reading an item that discussed ‘loess’ soil or a country home.[1] The recognition that falling in love with a real, close-up woman, not a movie star or high school teacher, nor even an army commander half a year older than her, was difficult, even frightening. Someone she could suddenly touch, tell things to.

            “Excuse me, ma’am, move aside,” a man glistening with sweat ordered into her ear, and she was shoved aside, almost falling with her shopping bag between two stands, where a Palestinian woman sat in an embroidered dress, behind an upturned crate.

            She looked in amazement at the round figs with green lines splitting their purple peels, and selected the finest and ripest ones for herself in solemn silence.

            At home, next to the sink, after washing them under a strong jet, she sliced the biggest of the lot and bit into its redness, licking the honeyed pulp full of seeds flowing onto her fingers, reminiscent of another taste, the taste of those long fingers, the taste of figs and dates, honey and pepper, cherries, blueberries and grapes, all the tastes in the world that merged together that night, when they had reached for each other, as if unknowingly, with eyes closed, hesitant at first, with their fingertips, and then engulfed with more passion by the moment, with every touch, every part of their bodies. That was the most wonderful night of her life, a night that was impossible to compare to all the futile attempts in the past with boys and men, each of which wanted to prove to her that he was the best. The real thing. There was no connection between those pistons, as she thought of them occasionally, removed from them and the act itself, as if it was not taking place in her body, and the wonderful flow, body and soul, of two women in one, in infinite, intoxicating pleasure.

            “I hope you remember it’s your turn to wash the floor,” her roommate spat at her. “I’m going away.”

            “So what’s with all the vegetables?”

            “That’s for the whole week.”

            It was almost two o’clock in the afternoon. After he went out, she started cutting up the figs, and before peeling the apples remembered she had to take advantage of the daylight hours, crammed a pile of light laundry into the washing machine, then struck her fingers against that annoying plug that never went in completely, until the orange light went on. There were a bunch of messages on the answering machine, and she listened to them hastily and added them to yesterday’s to-do list.

            She sliced the apples in precise rectangles, exactly two cups, on top of the heap of figs at the bottom of the pot, and then added the wine, the sugar, the cinnamon and the spices and turned the heat down to simmer. She leafed through the weekend paper, thinking that maybe she should have been more daring, spoken up, done something. They had never discussed that night. And it remained standing between them like a heavy, invisible cloud. Their friendship had continued, dying a slow death, until her friend had left the city.

            From outside wafted a faint smell of smoke, and she closed the window. The radio announced brushfires, upcoming demonstrations, threats, violence. She turned down the radio, stirred the mixture a little, took it off the burner and left it to cool. Meanwhile she drew pink letters on the glass jar: “Welcome Back.”

            It was almost four. In another hour and a half she would walk to the colony, and then they would go to “Kol Haneshama,” the Reform temple. On the way back they would probably sing “The sixth day, the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their host. And on the seventh day G-d finished Her work which She had made,” and “May your coming be in peace, angels of peace, angels of the Most High, the Queen who rules over queens, the Holy One, blessed be She,” from the prayer book that her friend had given her as a gift before leaving and was very dear to her. She took it down from the shelf and put it in her handbag.

The radio started playing lyrical songs. “Soon you’ll speak to me again, and my body will feel your body and your breath.” She loved this girl so much. And now she had invited her to dinner. She was back in the city. Surely she would enjoy this jam. This was how everything had started. Maybe the confection itself was not needed, but she well remembered the look in her eyes, the lingering over drop by drop of the purplish-brown liquid, the movements of her hands. She could fall in love with them all over again right now. And maybe that would happen, maybe now they would dare to speak, to feel, without fear. Without apologies, without cast-down glances and burdensome discussions in which the silences outnumber the words. Without the pain of this inability. Yes, they were not ripe enough for the experience back then. Whereas today, a year later, she had matured and ripened, gained peace of mind and self-confidence. Now her friend would certainly want it too. Yes, this hard city is not the ideal place to come out of the closet. No doubt about it, staying in another, more enlightened place had made her open up to love for herself and for the world. How wonderful the nights would be from now on, and the days to come. Getting up with her like before.

Her visions swept her into the light dreaming of a languid afternoon nap, a hairbreadth away from reality.

             When she awoke about an hour later, the city was already wrapped in Sabbath Eve silence, and the sun cast yellowish-orange squares of light on the walls of the houses. In the shower she let the warm water twist around her body in a slow stream. She stepped naked out of the shower, reveling in the cool breeze breaking the oppressive heat wave. The cat licked herself on the balcony. She put on her rainbow shirt and the white pants that she had worn at that dinner a year ago, and went out to amble peacefully through the city streets. The hate, tension, noise and smoke that had choked them just a few hours ago had disappeared as if never there.

            It was exactly six-thirty. She was on time, as always. And I knew I had made a mistake. I should have explained. Said something. I remember so well how that love of hers suffocated me. Every gesture, every step, every word I said back then wore a different, special meaning. I should not have run away. I escaped from myself more than from her. Yes, this city was hard on me. But not just the city. My self was also hard on me, tormenting me for tasting the forbidden honey, the concoction she had prepared for me. And the honey was too thick and heavy, too sticky. I had to get free of it, to find an airier sweetness that I could digest, not just taste. I hope she will forgive me.

            Now, standing in the doorway of the illuminated spacious apartment, she was so beautiful, calm and sure of herself. I wanted to embrace her, to tell her she would be proud of me. But it was already too late. She held out a painted jar, and I knew what was inside. I knew what she was thinking. I had it in my hands, in my whole body, and there was nothing I could do with it. I invited her in. My partner was waiting in the living room, where a bowl of small, green, new tangerines was placed on the table.

            “I’m so happy to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”