“What do they plan to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Usually they keep you informed.”

  “I think because of you, they’re trying to keep a low profile.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They don’t want to involve you.”

  “But why? It’s not like I’m getting in their way.”

  “I know, they know, but still.”

  “No one has spoken to me yet.”

  As soon as grand rounds ended, I approached the deputy department head to find out what they intended to do. She replied that they were trying to identify the cause of the anemia, which apparently stemmed from the underlying disease.

  “A personal piece of advice from me – be her husband, not her doctor,” she said in a different tone. I was stunned, and more than that – offended. Not for a moment had I thought of myself as her doctor. Certainly not in this department. I had questions as a husband, as a lover, as a beloved one – not as a competitor.

  “What are you trying to say?” I asked, trying to mask my feelings.

  “Treat your wife as her husband. Like every husband treats his wife, especially when she is ill.”

  “Look, I don’t interfere in any procedure. I just want to know, and I think I’m entitled to that.”

  “Would you like me to tell you when the official hours are for family consultations with the department’s doctors?” Her tone turned formal.

  “I understand, thank you,” I said and turned away.

  “Michael,” she called after me. I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t want her to see me in tears. But I turned anyway.

  “Yes?” I answered, my voice choked.

  “I have a bit more experience than you. Be her husband – it’s better. Take advice from someone with experience.”

  “But…” I couldn’t finish the sentence I wanted to say. “Thank you,” I said instead, and headed to Lily’s room.

  On the way I went into the bathroom. I couldn’t let her see me like this. I washed my face and waited. Only when I managed to smile at the image in the mirror, when the signs of crying had disappeared, did I go to Lily.

  I felt Shira following me. I didn’t want to tell her about the turmoil I had just experienced.

  “What do the doctors say?” Lily was tense.

  On the one hand, I didn’t want to disappoint her; on the other, I couldn’t avoid answering. I limited myself to saying they were investigating, and that the anemia was probably linked to the underlying disease, as before.

  “I don’t believe them,” Lily said, surprising me. “Maybe they’re wrong?”

  “Lily, don’t talk like that. You mustn’t create a crisis of trust now of all times.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’ve done so much for you over the years. They’re professionals. At least give them the chance to check.”

  “Fine. The truth is, I don’t have a choice.”

  “You don’t need a choice – you need to trust them. That’s all. They’re good.”

  “I know,” she replied with a note of resignation.

  “My Lily, I hope you’ll be back to yourself quickly.”

  “Look, I don’t feel bad. Just a bit weak and tired, that’s all.”

  “Do you want to go home?” I smiled at her.

  “Yes, but I can’t. I need to regain my strength.”

  “Has anyone spoken to you about being discharged?” I thought that was what she was getting at.

  “Not yet, but they know me. I won’t stay one day – no, not even one minute – longer than necessary.”

  “At least take the blood you’re missing.” I looked at the bag, already more than half empty.

  “I know. But if they don’t have anything more to do with me, and if my hemoglobin is fine, I’m out of here. I could be home tomorrow morning. I’ll even promise them to fast, so they can draw blood for their tests without problems.”

  A nurse came in and replaced the blood bag with a saline infusion. Lily asked to go out to the balcony. I tried to help her up and push the IV pole, but she resisted.

  “I’m so experienced at this,” she said, this time with full laughter. At least for now, she had accepted being a patient in the ward.

  “I see Eilat,” she said as we stood embracing on the wide balcony of her room.

  “Eilat???”

  “Just kidding. I miss Eilat so much – the workshop, the students…”

  “You’ll be there in a few days. I think this sudden drop in hemoglobin points to bleeding, not the underlying disease. But who am I to say?”

  “It’s strange to say, but I really hope you’re right.”

  We looked southwest. The sun was almost setting, and the colors in the sky made us forget where we were. Tears filled her eyes – and mine too.

  The next evening, Lily was released, though only temporarily, since she had to return each morning fasting for tests until her final discharge. Thanks to the transfusions, her hemoglobin rose to 11 and stayed that way for three days in a row. She was discharged completely.

  In her discharge letter, which they couldn’t prevent me from reading, it was noted that Lily had anemia, apparently from the underlying disease. The name of the disease was missing. At the end, the doctor recommended giving her 10 mg of hydrocortisone every two days. Exactly as had been written in her discharge letter three years earlier, just as she had taken before Judah arrived.

  Despite the physicians thinking that the underlying disease had caused the anemia, Lily was not given the customary steroid dosage.

  Nor did she tell the doctors that before her admission to the ward, she had only been taking 5 mg of cortisone every two days. And we never brought it up between us.

  And what a wonder: immediately upon her discharge from the hospital, she asked to go gallery-hopping. My pleas that she rest, relax, that the galleries would not run away – were of no use. Lily was there exactly one hour after her release.

  The next day, we went down to Eilat, back to the workshop, to her teaching, and to her usual activities. Once every two weeks, she flew to her studies at the College of Art and Design. Her condition stabilized.

  Chapter 51

  A Life Mask

  About two weeks after Lily was discharged from the hospital, she returned to Eilat – and not alone. She brought with her a large, heavy can and asked me to help carry it to the studio.

  “What’s in the can?” I asked.

  “A surprise,” she said, like a keeper of secrets.

  I set the can down in the studio’s storeroom. “It’s a special material,” she explained. “When you mix it with water, it becomes soft and pliable, and you can use it to take casts of hard surfaces – for example, to make sculptures.”

  I was surprised. Until that day, Lily had never spoken about sculpture, nor shown any interest in it.

  “I decided to take a sculpture course at the College of Art and Design,” she told me, “and to move into a fusion of three-dimensional art – painting and sculpture.”

  “And what do you want to do with it?” I wondered. “Our apartment’s too small to turn into a sculpture gallery,” I teased in half-seriousness. Lily replied that she didn’t yet know.

  On the way home, she seemed pensive and tired, so I decided not to bother her with questions about this new pursuit she had started. Once the apartment door shut behind us and the hugs and kisses were over, she said she wanted to make a “face cast.”

  “Whose face?”

  “My own,” she answered calmly.

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Not at all – but you’ll have to help me.”

  “Support you, or help you?”

  “Both.”

  I remembered how, on her previous return from Tel-Aviv, she’d told me about death masks – about their long history in art and their modern applications.

  “You mean to make a death mask?” I asked uneasily.

  “No – you don’t understand. I want to make a life mask,” she said, before I even realized the mistake I’d made in uttering the word death.

  “Who does that? You told me about death masks, not life masks.”

  “I will. Other people do it too, especially for famous figures.”

  “What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing. I just want to do it, and that’s that. I’ve decided.” She pronounced it in her usual tone – one that left no room for further discussion. I gave in. I knew there was no point arguing. By now, I already knew that stubbornness was her middle name.

  “So, tell me – are you ready to help me make the mask?” she asked one evening when I came home from work.

  “I don’t want to – but I love you. I’ll help…” I surrendered to her request.

  The weather that Saturday was beautiful – not too hot. I thought we’d go down to Rafael Nelson’s beach to catch some sun, relax, and meet friends. Lily enjoyed royal treatment at that beach, especially since Nelson had begun attending her classes. Every time he saw her enter the village, he would come out to greet her and invite her – us – to join him at the central platform. Lily always blushed at the nickname morati (“my teacher”), which he shouted there loudly and often.

  That Saturday, though, she asked that we skip the beach and go straight to the studio in the morning. Once Lily set her sights on something, she never let go.

  “Don’t think this will be simple to carry out,” she said as we opened the studio door. “I learned the technique at the College of Art and Design. Once the mixture is ready, I’ll breathe through straws while you apply the material over my face.”

  “You want me to do what?” I was taken aback.

  “You’ll apply the material on my face.”

  “And how will you breathe? Are you crazy? The stuff will cover your nose and mouth.”

  “I brought wide straws.”

  “Straws?!” I was horrified. “You’ll choke! I’m not doing it!”

  “I’ll practice first – and we’ll check.”

  “You’ve lost your mind – with your damn stubbornness.” I shook the car keys in open impatience. “We’re going home!”

  “If you want to leave, then leave. I’ll call Dan. He’ll help me for sure.” Lily dropped a bomb.

  “What’s with you and this Dan?” I burst out.

  “Nothing. If you won’t help, someone has to. I need help!” Lily came closer and hugged me. I stayed silent. She had me cornered. I knew that if I abandoned her, she’d call Dan, and he’d come. Why would I want that?

  “What do you care? Help me – it could be interesting,” she said, touching parts of me she knew well – my curiosity, my creativity, and yes, even my jealousy, I admitted to myself.

  “All right,” I muttered.

  “So let’s start with an experiment.” Her eyes lit up.

  Lily prepared a small batch of the material so we could figure out the timing – the mixing, the waiting for it to harden, and how to breathe with the straws.

  “I’ll put two straws in my mouth, you spread the material over me, and we’ll see,” she instructed.

  I did as she asked. Lily struggled to breathe and quickly removed the material from her face.

  “Please, let’s stop here,” I pleaded, feeling the pressure drop from my throat into my chest. But she refused.

  “That’s exactly the purpose of preliminary experiments,” she said with determination.

  “Do you think you can last two minutes breathing through a straw?” I asked nervously.

  This time, Lily put three straws in her mouth. Her breathing was indeed easier. She passed two minutes with no problem.

  “Ready?” I asked. I knew we had to succeed in one go – otherwise she’d have to bring another can from the north, and we’d spend another Saturday in the studio instead of at Nelson’s.

  I quickly mixed a large amount of the material with water. When it reached the right consistency, Lily lay down on the bare floor. Slowly and carefully, I spread the viscous substance over her face.

  “Close your eyes, close your eyes,” I urged as I saw the mixture trickle down from her forehead toward her eyes.

  “Don’t worry – it’s not poison.”

  When the material covered her nose, I panicked. What if she stopped breathing? What if she inhaled it? It was too late to turn back. Lily put the three straws in her mouth and lay completely still. Only her chest rose and fell, her breathing quickened – but her face remained utterly relaxed. The silence in the room heightened the tension. Without realizing it, I held my breath too, as if in solidarity with her – but failed to keep pace. I knew I mustn’t utter a word, lest she react and we’d have to redo everything.

  “Magnificent,” I told her three minutes later, as I peeled the elastic material – now hardened – off her face.

  “Thank you.” She wiped the residue from her face and got up from the floor.

  “You’ve no idea how happy I am,” she said, hugging and kissing me as if she’d just finished a hundred-meter sprint in first place.

  “And now what?”

  “Now we pour plaster into the mold.”

  In this stage, she revealed great skill. She used a wooden box filled with sand to support the rubber mold, and poured a generous amount of white plaster into it. Lily separated the plaster from the rubber and gazed at her creation in disbelief – her life mask. The bright white plaster, warm to the touch, seemed almost to breathe with life. The joy that radiated from her response to the final result was absolute.

  In the days that followed, Lily duplicated her life mask several times. Tirelessly, she created a whole series of images, photographs, paintings – and now, sculptures too…

  I never imagined that the life mask that she’d shaped with her own hands would one day become her death mask.

  Chapter 52

  Body Art

  Lily’s works went through a transformation. Influenced by her teachers in body art, she took those ideas as far as she could. She didn’t stop painting on canvas or huge plywood boards, but she began using self-photography more and more. When she wanted to see the innards up close, she asked Dr. Rifin, head of the surgical department at Desert Springs Hospital, for permission to photograph in the operating room.

  When the approvals came, no one was happier than she was. She documented an abdominal surgery and used the material she collected there for three-dimensional works, in which her own figure was placed on the operating table, with the color red becoming more and more of a central motif in her work.

  And so, about two weeks after the “Sabbath of the Mask,” she again gave up Nelson Beach, and we went out to look for a place in the desert.

  “I want to get to an area I was once in, where the ground was barren, hard, wounded, torn, cut across and along,” Lily said, describing the place she had visited during one of the open-air painting days with Marisa Vale and her group. “It’s at the beginning of Solomon River estuary.”

  “And what’s my role in this story?” I asked.

  “House photographer…”

  This time I didn’t reply. It sounded very reasonable. I drove slowly up the streambed. Each time she asked to stop, she got out of the jeep and examined the ground around it.

  “Here it is, stop… Don’t ruin the pattern.”

  When the engine went silent and Lily jumped from the jeep, my heart skipped a beat.

  “This is it,” she called. “Come down carefully and see.”

  She moved away from the jeep, occasionally bending to examine the soil. When she reached an area where the sand looked more “marine” or “golden,” she stopped and called me to come closer. She wanted me to feel the soil, the colors, and the stark contrast between the soft golden sand – which seemed to recall that the area had once been covered by the sea – and the cracked, parched brown clods that looked as if they were waiting for the sea to return.

  “Come, feel the ground and the contrasts it holds. This is exactly the place I was looking for. After we feel it, we’ll start working.”

  Lily began to play with the sand, letting it slip through her fingers and covering her bare feet. I watched her – the little girl playing in the ‘sea sand’ in the middle of the desert. A kind of masterpiece. In my opinion, she hadn’t changed at all in the past three years. She was so beautiful. The light only added depth to her fair colors. I approached her and slowly caressed her face. I ran my finger along her chin, then to her lower lip, toward her upper lip and her nose. She seemed to try to swallow my finger. I didn’t resist. I even helped her. Suddenly I found myself beneath her. I hadn’t imagined her physical strength. The eruption of love that burst from her ebbed slowly, many minutes later, until she calmed down.

  “You wanted to go to the sea, didn’t you?” she asked while brushing golden sand from her face.

  “So I brought you to a sea of sand, sand of the sea,” she said, scooping a handful of sand and tossing it onto my bare chest.

  When we stood up, still embracing, more and more golden grains of sand fell from us. The contrast between the small piles of yellow sand on the dry, brown ground was clear. I knew the first breeze would return the scene to what it had been.

  “I really want us to come back here before sunset,” she said suddenly, and then added,

  “I have an idea, and I want to carry it out.”

  “Why not now? We’re already here!”

  “I want to bring a few more props,” she explained.

  “Yes, ma’am, whatever you say!” I saluted. Lily laughed.

  A few hours later, Lily stood beside me, dressed in a tight black shirt and faded jeans. By the door were some of the objects she wanted to take back to the stream, and the rest we collected from the studio – including her life mask. I brought the camera. The sun was still high, and it was hot.

  We arrived at the same spot as the previous morning, and saw that our footprints were still there. Lily changed clothes, taking off her jeans and black shirt while putting on a white bodysuit. I didn’t know when she had bought it or what she was about to do, but it was clear she had prepared carefully for this moment.