The Marsh Angel by Hagai Dagan (best thriller books to read .TXT) 📕

evening skies like skimmed milk. He leaned in carefully and kissed her, just barely grazing her lips with his. They were somewhat clenched at first, but slowly relaxed. He suddenly felt a strong urge to hug her. When was the last time he had hugged someone? He surrounded her with his arms. She leaned in, her shoulders hunched. His head touched her shoulder, her hands coiled around his waist, as if performing an unfamiliar action. This won’t be easy, he thought, but an unexpected, subterranean shiver ran through his insides.

c. At the Tail-End of All Things

He figured her out piecemeal. Like glaciers in Greenland in the summertime, she thawed slowly, and only partially. Parts of her remained reclusive, recalcitrant, even after months. Her speech remained terse, colloquial, almost farmer-talk— the weather’ll be good tomorrow, we’ll be able to sow. Short sentences, long silences. But her body began to submit to his touch, and he was happy to see that his intuition was right: behind the high walls lay gardens, lush with vegetation and trickling streams, and at the heart of the garden, under a pavilion, was a sweets-stand vending all sorts of cakes and pastries, and even whipped hot chocolate.

He studied her body with patience and care. He gazed at her extensively, when dressed or nude, standing in front of the mirror or lying pensively in bed. Her body was at once both firm and soft. Her posture was gathered, alert, regimented. Her waist was by no means narrow, but not cello or contrabass-shaped either. Her bottom was thick and soft, but not to the point of bursting out ostentatiously. He thought of a swimmer’s pelvis. Her shoulders, broad and firm yet somewhat hunched, also brought to mind something between a swimmer and an adolescent observant girl hunching her back and shoulders to try and stave off the inevitable blossoming of womanhood. But in her case, that attempt— to the extent it was entertained at all— had failed.

He loved putting his head on her belly, her small, dialectic belly, that was acquiescent, serene, and receptive, and at the same time stern, almost Spartan. He would linger there for a long time, and then move southbound, down along the shadow, down to oblivion, to the warm springs known to none but a few. Sweet darkness, encrypted in the abyss, undeciphered, unannotated, for his eyes only, his shut eyes that can see in the dark, his resting head, cast in the tail-end of all things, beneath him darkness and darkness above him, floating between darkness and darkness. Beneath the darkness below, fountains of warm mead pulsed; over the darkness above, Polnochi fluttered like the silhouette of a distant memory, of a forgotten and illusive mirage, fluttered and dissipated, dissipated and fluttered.

d. Rustic Grace

In the evenings they would eat together, talk a little, listen to music. They never quite found their flow, but over time, their stop-start conversations became a matter of pleasant habit. There was something coarse and simplistic about their conversations— as if they were in agreement that there was no point in wasting words on most subjects. Occasionally, he asked her questions about science, something he never knew much about, and she would explain. He liked listening to her. She spoke without embellishment, clear and to the point, every once and a while seasoning her responses with some colloquial joke, at times outright obscenities, which she somehow managed to deliver with an air of rustic grace.

She liked sitting on the balcony and drinking beer in silence, and he liked watching her drinking her beer in silence. They never moved in together— they saw no need to do so, but they slept together three nights a week. On Fridays and Saturdays, when she did not have to be in her lab in the morning, she would sleep in, waking up late and looking at Tamir lying beside her. Usually, her eyes settled on his imperious morning glory. She would place her hand on it and say: hmm. What was the meaning of that hmm? The gates of exegesis were never closed. Tamir felt there was a degree of confirmation invested in that hum, as if to say— that is the way of the world; but he also attributed it a certain sense of validation, as if to say— that is the way of the world, and it is good so. He also interpreted it through the lens of scientific inquiry, as if she was confirming his reproductive instrument was operating intact, and that she was now going to operate accordingly. And operate accordingly she did. Tamir was very fond of those slow mornings. Later in the day, they would sit on the electric adjustable bed he had purchased, reading the paper and sipping coffee.

Tamir repeatedly asked himself whether there was something limited in their relationship. Yes, there’s something limited in it, he answered himself. But is that a problem? Obviously, all relationships are limited to an extent. Did he feel any regret, a feeling of missing out? Yes, occasionally, but that feeling seemed childish to him. Grow up, he berated himself, you have a decent thing going on with her. Primordial Slavic princesses are not about to descend down from the sky— and even if they were, what would you do with them? After the fireworks die out, what would you do then? Sit around on Friday morning reading the newspaper.

They stayed together, doing things couples did when they were together. They would visit Levinsky Market, buy olives and cheeses, sit in pubs, drink beers in mutual silence. She was fond of Tel-Aviv. She said it suited her needs after discharging from the army, that she desired to live in a big city where no one knew her, free from the scrutiny of others. She told him that she used to be a heavy smoker back in those days, until at some point she had made the decision to quit, and that was that, a cigarette hadn’t touched her lips since.