“Nothing wounds you as deeply as the shards of your own happiness”
Mikhail Zhvanetsky
Saturday night he felt an urge to call his ex-wife.
He had no idea why he needed it, and he knew for a fact that she didn’t need it at all.
It’s been a while since her voice flowed like honey and velvet on the phone, a while since her smile poppled in her dark eyes, and his hands have long forgotten how unbelievably tender is her skin under her strict blouse.
Two years ago when she left he could hardly wait for her to finally disappear in the narrow passage leading to passport control.
Freedom and new jolly woman awaited him, his wife’s – now ex-wife’s – tears and reproaches had exhausted him during those past few years, and in his mind he has already given up both her and their son long time ago.
And even his conscience wasn’t gnawing at him anymore – after all, it was totally her decision. She was the one who decided to leave the country, she bought the tickets, she filed for divorce.
After all, he also had to get his life together somehow, so meeting an old flame was so lucky and just on time, and new love began so easily and cheerfully.
So easily was the new happiness born, and the old one shuttered so seamlessly.
Who knew the shards pierce you so deeply and hurt so badly!
The first one wounded him when he caught Marc’s gaze from behind his wife, walking into the airport’s dark corridor.
The son stared at him meekly and mournfully, like a deserted kitten. His eyes, dark like prunes, were filled with tears up to his eyelashes, but Marc did his best to hang in, because his dad told him to be a man and not to cry. So he didn’t.
Dina later said that he only cried on the plane – from the anguish and horror of noisy and incomprehensible everything. But before that he turned around to make sure dad doesn’t see him anymore.
And dad never saw him again.
At first, going to Israel didn’t even cross his mind, and what would he even do there?..
Dina sent one short text message after they landed, and hasn’t contacted him since.
For the second time, he felt this shard right in his solar plexus when on the New Year’s eve, his first New Year as a free man, as he put it, getting tipsy and soft, he decided – why don’t I call this stubborn little dummy, she must be all alone there, crying her eyes out, so I will do a good deed and console her, and also, let her report how Marc is doing, I’m his father, after all!
She didn’t pick up the phone. But texted him instead: “We are fine, no need to call”.
What a trash, was it so hard to pick up the phone?! He was boiling over with his friends mumbling comfortingly, and the shard wouldn’t melt away, it was stuck like a splinter in his soul, wouldn’t let him breathe.
I’m fine too, he thought. What do I care about them, they were the ones that dumped me, they left and they aren’t talking to me.
“They left me” – the shard in his solar plexus resonated.
“Left me” – its sharp edge vibrated, “Left… Me…”
A year passed, his daughter was born. But cuddling the blue-eyed baby, he remembered another pair of eyes – dark like olives, like prunes – filled with tears to the brim, and every time the shard in his soul told him – clink, how do you like your happiness, does it hurt?
And then everything collapsed completely.
The new was irritating him for no reason, and the old attacked him from behind the corner again and again, tearing pieces off his heart.
A sudden turn of his colleague’s head during the meeting reminded him of Dina – clink. He would fold in pain hearing someone else’s child crying – clink-clink… His wife was hugging him, and he suddenly remembered how Dina’s armpits smelled after shower – clink, clink, clink…
And those dreams.
Each time he woke up panting, his hands shaking, his eyelashes sticky with tears – and recalled how she banished him in a dream. Or sometimes forgave him.
And this chimerical carousel was burning away everything real, actual, made it equal to a dream, and the dream became more real than his entire new and happy life.
Suddenly he started reading about Israel – everything he could find: news, history, Judaism of all sorts, he followed every Israeli group on Facebook. He monitored closely the notifications in the group of a city where she lived. Checked all the likes under every post – just in case he would see her name.
He was going crazy, and he realized that.
His life was breaking to pieces – as did his old happiness two years ago.
And now, as Shabbat ended – (he downloaded a special calendar, telling him every week whenever Shabbat started or ended – he felt like it somehow made him closer to Dina and Marc) – he locked himself in his room, staring glumly on his phone and imagining his ex-wife, the gloomy pain in his ass, the woman who dumped him, is sitting on the beach somewhere, eating ice-cream with his son, looking at the sea and laughing.
His woman. His child. His love. The meaning of his stupid life.
I’m fine, he was trying to convince himself. I don’t need to call her. I’m fine, he was telling himself and crying silently while looking at his phone, yes, I’m absolutely fine.
Translated by Diana Shnaiderman-Pereira