part two
1
I knew it as soon I saw the doctor approaching. He was tired and pale and took me by the elbow and guided me into a separate room, where he had me sit down on an examination table. I only understood bits and pieces: emergency surgery, complications, outflow of bone marrow, complications, fat embolism, not rare, complications, drop in blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmia, cardiac arrest.
He took off his glasses and wiped his forehead.
“He couldn’t be revived. Do you want to see his body?”
Elisha lay on the bed. His body was cold, but not yet stiff. His eyes were shut. They had dressed him in a hospital gown. I opened it. The surgery wound on his thigh had been carelessly stitched. His chest had been closed in the same coarse fashion. I sat down on the edge of the bed. A nurse opened the door a crack, apologized, and came in. I waited until she had left, then locked the door. He couldn’t die. Only a few meters away. He should have waited for me. We could have died together. I wouldn’t have minded. I sang nursery rhymes for him, as if I wanted to cradle him to sleep. I sang badly and hoped something would move in his face, a brief twitch at the corners of his mouth, a flared nostril, a blink, a flick of his hand, but I knew that he was dead. With the nail of my index finger I traced his skin, at first with more pressure, then softly. He was motionless, cold. A ray of light divided the room in two halves. I lay down next to him on the bed as his body became increasingly stiff. There was no glowing sunrise. The sky was completely white. Elisha had always said that such light meant it was going to be a hot day. Somebody knocked. Morning came and the knocking became a hammering.
According to Jewish faith the soul leaves the body at the time of death, but sticks around nearby until the body has been buried. Therefore the body must not be left alone. But Elisha wasn’t Jewish, and I wasn’t religious. Somebody yelled my name. At some point the nurse and two doctors, whom I didn’t know, were standing in front of me. I hadn’t even heard them unlock the door. One of them had a broad back and a weathered face and reminded me of the Russian swimmer Alexander Popov. I’d been sitting next to my mother in front of the TV when Popov won gold at the Olympics in Barcelona. The doctor pushed me into a chair.
I left the hospital, crossed the narrow street, and waited at the bus stop. Birds were chirping and the bus was on time. The bus driver said hello and I sat down in the last row and pressed my face against the scratched window. The landscape was still there. Long rows of parked cars, small houses, well-tended gardens. Here and there a tree.
I got off at the first subway stop. Went down, threw the trash from my pockets into an overflowing bin that was swarming with flies. I threw up. I wiped my mouth. A few punks took a piss onto the tracks and laughed. The subway came and the punks lifted their backpacks and got on, one after the other. The air in the car was stuffy. The stops cycled in and out, and along with them the passengers, most of whom had their backs turned to me. I was in front of my door and then in the hallway of the apartment. I hung my keys on the hook next to the door and took off my shoes. In the bathroom I was hit by a wall of warm, moist air. The water was scalding hot. The drain cover was full of blond hair. His hair. There were unopened letters on the kitchen table that were addressed to Elisha. Under the pillow was his T-shirt. There was a smell of his sweat and of milk in the air, although Elisha had very rarely smelled sweaty and never smelled like milk. After a while, only the scent of sour milk would remain. I coiled up and everything around me began to spin. I could feel the sickness rising. I staggered into the bathroom and threw up next to the toilet. My circulatory system, my knees and palms, all signaled that my body was throwing in the towel. I trembled and lay back down in bed, and nothing seemed more urgent to me than sleeping.