Karen Alkalay-Gut

 

 

 

                                                                   THE WITCH

 

            She had to stop looking out this way.  It was the window that was ruining her life–the window and the mirror.  In the mirror it was clear that no matter what she saw outside the window, she could never have it.

            The light had finally gone on in his apartment.  She hadn’t see him coming in from the street, but it was getting dark and she’d probably missed him.  And she wasn’t sure whether he would be alone or not.  Usually when he went out around midnight he’d come back within an hour or two with some woman, but sometimes he had business meetings, even at those hours of the night, and would return alone like a thief without even turning on the light.

            Tonight he was with someone.  She saw him open the fridge and take out two beers.  Someone on the other side of the fridge door pushed against it and it shut.  Then from the shadows she saw a pair of long legs move toward where he was standing with the beers.            

            Now the angle was wrong.  She could see his back but he was blocking the woman’s body, so all she could discern of the woman was her arm grasping his shoulders, and then one leg moving up around his waist.  Then he lifted her up onto the counter and she could see both of them in profile. 

            It was over fast.  Then he retrieved the beers from behind the woman sitting on the counter and poured them into glasses.  They began to talk as he leaned against the fridge and the woman sat swinging her legs.

            Afterglow.

            Her hand moved up from between her legs to her forehead as she became aware of her participation in his excitement.  She was humiliated. 

            She forced herself to look into the mirror, at the sheer absurdity of the longing look on her aging face.  

            The face would have been dignified had it not been for the expression.  Noble.  There was a sharp, wise look in her eyes, a stateliness in her cheekbones, but this second childhood mooning was ridiculous. 

            She turned from the mirror and shut out the light.  In the morning she would see him at the record shop.

 

            But in the morning she was haggard after the night of hunger.  By ten she had still not gone down for her morning errands, and stood in the bathroom staring at the strange face. 

            Never in her life had she been so obsessed.  When Oscar was alive she paid no attention to other men, and before Oscar she’d thought herself free to choose, reject and tease as she pleased.            And this madness was over a year old.  It was in September last year when she discovered the record shop, the hypnotic smile of the man behind the counter.  She’d walked out then without buying the tape she’d planned to give her granddaughter for her fifth birthday.  She’d walked out confused and bought her a sweater instead.

            But she came back a week later.  Her grandson was going to be twelve, and she needed advice on what to buy him.  And he was impressed with her interest.

            No matter how hard she tried to remember it was not clear to her how their Saturday brunch custom began.  But she did recall another crucial moment clearly: One day she realized that she was his excuse to the women he brought home over Friday night–they couldn’t stay over because he was expecting his old friend for breakfast.  Sometime around then she also began to fantasize about how she would have made him want her to stay for breakfast had she been younger.

            Of course her entire week revolved around those breakfasts.  Since she would bring the food with her, she would begin planning days in advance–surprises, delicacies, secret jokes reflecting back to earlier breakfasts.  She planned her casual clothing too–how to be attractive without looking intentional about it.  Oscar had once said that a woman of forty could look as good as a woman of twenty–it just took twice as long.  She was forty then.  Now, she reckoned, she probably needed three times as much preparation, but her despair and impatience made her always turn away from her reflection and bury herself in a book.  

            And because he loved music so much, she had brought Oscar’s old records and his little wind-up victrola, leaving it at his place for convenience’s sake.  The music would bring back old memories and he would prompt her for stories that would parallel his own contemporary dilemmas.  There were times when she would go home elated with the morning.  Other times she would leave in a state of deep depression and spend the rest of the day in tears.

 

            There were certain things she just had to do this morning.  There was no way to just sit down at her desk and write out her community center report for the week.  Groceries, bank, and if there was time, a Billie Holiday tape for Amia in the hospital.          She went through it all as in a dream.  All of a sudden she would wake up and she’d be on the curb, crossing the street, or ordering the food she’d bought sent home.  Or becoming aware of a woman watching her in the queue for the cash machine.

            The woman must have been watching her for a few minutes.  The queue was not moving, as the young man in front of the machine refused vociferously to accept the decisions of the computer.  Was it because she was not dressed appropriately for her age–in her usual black jeans and khaki t-shirt?  Was it because she had forgotten something–part of her make-up perhaps (who could notice that–all her make-up was designed to look like there was no cosmetic involved)?  Maybe it was her chunky earring.

            The woman was staring now–and began to move closer as if she wanted to speak to her. 

            But the woman didn’t speak and a reverie began to take over her again.  She was massaging his long-muscled shoulders and whispering into his ear, promising him he would succeed now as a musician if he tried again…

 

            “These things can be arranged, you know,” a voice from the real world spoke, in a tone as practical as that of a bank teller.  “Some people deserve at least one dream come true in their life times, no matter how absurd.”  It was the woman, dressed in a bright purple cape, a purple that matched the deep violet eyes heavily encircled with kohl. 

            She was suddenly aware, for the first time that morning, of the actuality of her environment, as if she had just put on her glasses.

            “But as with most arrangements of this nature,” the woman went on, “You have a choice.”

            “What are you trying to tell me?”  She heard herself saying in a shrill voice, “Why are you talking like this in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day?”

            “That’s where dreams usually come true, you know,” the strange woman responded, in the same banal tone.

            The woman waited silently, as if giving her time for the pronouncement to sink in, then suggested they go somewhere and discuss it. 

            They were sitting in the remains of a beauty shop, a store that had gone out of business some time ago.  All that was left was the chair and the mirror and a high wheeled stool.

            “What’s the catch?” she said, half-cynically and half-expecting that she would be asked for a contract in blood.

            “Listen, dear, I don’t want your soul.  This isn’t Faust, we’re women, and you don’t want all that much anyway.  All we have to do is formulate the request proposal and you get it–your heart’s desire.  Of course there are the usual limitations–three wishes, a hierarchy of values–but with all that wasted energy we’ve expended in this business over the years our major condition is a clear proposal of intent.  What exactly is it you want?  How long?  How much of your original self do you wish to retain?”

            “Original self?”

            “Of course, my dear, in any case of metamorphosis some original characteristics must be dispensed with–there are so many personality complications as it is…

            “I’m not supposed to help you out with this, because I could be too much of an influence on intent, and that would ruin the entire pedagogical value of the proposal, but let me give you some pointers.  For example, do you actually want to BE young again? Would you be willing to give up some of the knowledge and experience you’ve acquired in order to get some of those wrinkles ironed out?  Do you want to be loved by this man? to be wanted?  Will it matter, for instance, if he is only in love with you because of a magic spell?  You have to evaluate the situation carefully before you determine what you ask for.  I’ll give you a week.”

 

            Amazing how fantasies could seem more real than reality, how difficult the distinctions were becoming.  Oscar had once said that it didn’t matter to him how wrinkled she got–his eyes were going at the same rate as her looks.  Now she was losing her reality vision, and perhaps it was a blessing because reality was losing its attraction.  She passed by the deserted beauty shop the next day and couldn’t even see the traces of her sitting on the chair in the dust.

            Still, something had changed, an emphasis in her illusions.  Just the idea of constructing a proposal of fulfillment seemed to have forced her into putting herself at the center of the fantasy.  “I want… I want…” she said to herself all morning, looking out the window at his drawn shades and then back to the mirror.  

            It wasn’t like a face lift she was proposing.  She knew that she could just pick up a journal the way one did at the hairdressers’ and ask to look like–this photograph–and then if she got it, she could easily convince him to be interested.  But unless she asked for his love, he would tire of her in the morning the way he had tired of countless beautiful and talented young ladies before.  And if she asked for his love, where would the challenge be–what would be the good of being beautiful?  Should she think about making his love for her the central wish–Perhaps she could remain the same fading woman she was–but he would be madly in love with her.

            Then some tale out of Boccaccio came back to her from somewhere.  The knight gets a witch for a wife and then is given the choice as to whether he wants her young and beautiful in the day time or in the night time.  And because he can’t decide and leaves the decision to his wife, she becomes lovely all day and night for him.  The thing was to let her make the decision.

            What if she were to let him make the decision, to bring up the whole subject at brunch–even as a theoretical question– and ask him what he thought?

            What would he say?  Wouldn’t he just want to take the wishes and run off?  And if she really believed that of him what was she doing wasting wishes on him in the first place?  It was suddenly difficult to predict anything about him at all.

            How does a person make all the decisions about a relationship at the beginning of it?  What if they didn’t hit it off somehow?  What if the whole magic of her love was precisely that impossible connection between the intimate Saturday morning breakfasts and the masturbatory voyeurism?

            “I want to try it for one night first,” she told the witch next time she met, “and then decide for good.  If it works I remain the same as I am in mind, but only younger in body.  If I don’t like it I want all traces of that night erased.”

            The witch was startled.  She had never had any doubts about the way the decision would go, and now all these conditions.  “Did you take into consideration the aspect of longevity?  Health?  Family relations?”

            “No variations.”

 

            Friday morning she stood before the mirror.  Full light.  Naked.  No straining to pull in the belly.  No careful angles to avoid.

            She could not take away her eyes. 

            There was really no difference between the way she looked now and the way she looked forty years ago, but now she was in a position to appreciate herself.  The scars of the caesarian and the appendectomy had vanished, although even before that they had almost become invisible under the multicreased skin.  All the skin was one warm honey color, and there were no sun spots.  The hair was full, chestnut, shining.         

            All the make up thrown into her table drawer came out, all the fitted dresses were laid out on her bed.  The morning flew by in ecstasy and only near noon did she remember she had to go down to the store before lunch if she wanted to make sure she’d catch him for tonight.

            There was an expression of sheer concentration he wore sometimes.  She had seen it before when he was with her and a beautiful woman walked by.  His nose became sharper, his black eyes brightened in determination, and his mouth took on a pinched grin.             And now that glance was directed at her.            

            It occurred to her for a moment that her disdain for the health factor might now become her downfall.  Her heart was beating far, far too fast for her true body.

            She imagined herself fainting in the music shop, falling down between the rows and rows of disks, then being cradled in the arms she knew so well that had never touched her. 

            Then she caught herself, and thinking that if it were true that she’d make a serious mistake in not regulating her body, and that she would die any moment, she’d better make use of the time left, and stepped forward intrepidly.  “Well, are you going to help me or aren’t you?”  she asked, leaving the innuendos echoing in the room.

            “So beautiful and so bold!”  he answered in sheer joy.  “A sunny Friday morning, an incredible jazz disk just out, and an amazing woman in my shop–it’s a dream come true!”

            “I don’t have much time.  Let’s get down to brass tacks. . . . . Your tacks or mine?”

            She was to meet him in the corner pub an hour after his shop closed.  It gave him time to shower and change and probably do all the things to himself in the bathroom and bedroom she had always wondered about from the window.

            It gave her time to be with her mirrors.  First in the shops and then at home.  She was dressed an hour before their meeting–the new burnt-orange velvet dress, short and fitted, the coffee stockings that ended in lace at the thigh, the brown suede heels.  Lipstick.  Mascara.  How long had it been since she had lived in color?

            She was not surprised that he was obviously enchanted by her, that he was finding it difficult to carry on any sort of conversation as he watched her.  It was no less than she deserved, no less than she had been craving for months.  There was no difference, she now knew, between the desires of her old body and the anticipations of the new one–except perhaps the knowledge of years of desire and fulfillment, and the center of desire’s gravity.  Now she herself was the center.

            She walked before him up the stairs to his flat, then waited demurely in the inside hall to see which way they would move.  He was standing opposite her smiling and she moved toward him.

            He moved back, backward toward the kitchen.  “Want something to drink?”

            “We’ve been drinking all evening.  Let’s relax.”  She veered towards the living/bed room.  He took her elbow and turned her back.

            “Listen to me,” He whispered, “You’re incredible.  But you’ve got to help me out.  I’ve got two handicaps. 

            “I can only do it in the kitchen. 

            “And I can only do it when the neighbor across the street is watching.”