The Remains of Love (43 page)

What’s the point of a luxury room in a hotel, it isn’t this that she longs for, but to pack a suitcase and go to her child, the one person in the world to whom she can still bring happiness. Even if the first year is difficult and the second too, even if he is cold and suspicious, aggressive and menacing, she will believe in him because she will know him; after all this is exactly the way she used to be herself, and still is to this day.

From moment to moment the air is warming up and her hopes grow stronger, he won’t refuse her on her birthday. It seems they have left their gloom behind in the rainy city and they’re passing through the gates of another country where everything is possible, if in the middle of winter her bones are thawing and she’s shedding garment after garment, left with only a thin vest, perhaps the strata enfolding his heart will disintegrate in the face of her appeal, for you too this will be good, if you don’t fight it, giving a home to a child who has nothing, have you anything better to do in your life? And when she looks at his handsome, still boyish profile, with the charm wrinkles around his eyes and running down his cheeks, it seems to her he’s already agreed, their journey has really begun and it’s painting this very day in colours of hope and significance. It isn’t for the purpose of dining and resting and enjoying themselves that they have crossed the thirsty desert but to take the child to their bosom, and this man beside her in the driving seat is destined to be the father of the child and thereby her love for him will be deepened, she already feels this with all her body, with all her years, the wondrous awakening to greet the future, sometimes you have to create the future if it doesn’t create itself, and this she does, and this she will tell him, I’ve prepared a future for us, come and join me, you can always leave.

From moment to moment her love for him grows, since the mysterious and so painful strength inherent in his absence now confers a miraculous grace on his presence by her side, turning them momentarily into the children of gods, and her love fills the void of the car, her love for him, for life itself of which she had almost despaired, for their daughter, for the child who’s waiting for them, it seems that if she opens the window her love will stream away and kiss the mountains that sprawl side by side, kneeling submissively like a train of camels. Soon they will be roused from their repose, parched lips gaping, but the more they drink so the flow will be increased, as she gives more so her stocks will be replenished, it’s the wonder of existence, that the very thought of the child gives her legendary strength, set to increase as the sights surrounding them lose their substance.

Can it be that the sight I’m seeing, the mighty pillars, the iridescent sea, the rosy vapours rising from it and swallowed by the sky, can this be the way the next world will look? But for the time being it’s the energy of this world that she feels, demanding of her that she act before her life is over, and that is why the moment they arrive at the room assigned to them, she will turn to this man with whom she’s chosen to live her life and tell him of her final decision and ask him for his backing.

Is this the hazy air that’s quivering before her, filtering in through the open window, or is she the one who’s doing the quivering, so fragile is the moment, like thin and polished glass, and everything she sees through it, the good and the bad, blessing and curse, and although she knows that life generally takes the middle way between these extremes, it seems to her this time there is no intermediate option, soaring to the heights or crashing to the ground, acceptance or divorce, and that’s why she’s quaking by the open window, but when she pulls a sheet over her naked body she is enfolded by a happy certainty. It’s going to happen, at the end of the day it depends only on her, and therefore she’s entitled to relax for a while and make room between them for that delight, delight of the heart and delight of the body, and for a moment she wonders about this word, the name that never suited her mother, nor the time and place she was born into; what were her parents thinking of, saddling her with that combination of letters?

Poor Hemda, not much delight in her life, she says aloud, and Gideon, coming out of the shower with a towel around his waist, asks with a smile, what did you say? Oh, nothing, she replies, smiling back at him, because now she wants to be light and jolly, sink into the depths of the moment and feel its pleasures in full, she wants to love this man at this moment, she wants to love his body and her body, which today celebrated its forty-sixth year, and even if it can no longer bring life it can still love, and this ability time will not steal from it and perhaps it’s the opposite, perhaps with the end of fertility the heart is eager to make up the deficit, because she loves his little and slightly twisted smile, and the precision of his movements when he aims the camera at the mysterious haze in their window; it seems everything will be revealed there when it clears, even her mother’s lost lake.

On her birthday she always thinks about her mother; of course it belonged to her first and foremost and years were to pass before the birthday was removed from the purview of the parents and placed at the disposal of the children as a first sign of adulthood, Mazaltov, Mother, even though you never learned how to enjoy me, and Gideon turns the lens of the camera towards her, what is this, all the time it seems to me there’s someone else in the room with us. There’s always other people with us, she says, those who bore us and those we bore and those who weren’t born, and he grins and presses the button, just don’t start again with your lamentations, but she isn’t offended, she likes being photographed like this, sitting on the end of the bed with her shoulders exposed, apparently she’s still beautiful in his eyes, as he is in hers, and she takes the camera from him and puts it to her eye, wait a moment, don’t move. Like a couple on whom a painful separation has been imposed they photograph each other, but the picture she takes of him won’t come out well, as at that precise moment he advances on her and grasps her chin and caresses her shoulder and pulls the sheet away, and when her back arches to accept him she knows they’re no longer a veteran couple trying to rekindle burnt-out embers, but a man and a woman on the verge of change, and even he who doesn’t yet know it is changing before her eyes, in years she hasn’t seen him like this, eager and committed. Does he too understand that at this very moment the embryo of a decision is taking shape between them, a spark of love for the child of whom they know nothing yet other than that he belongs to no one, the child of no one who will become their own?

This is a moment of conception, and through its energy their desire is redoubled and their intimacy intensified, from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head she rejoices in the tactile, the touch of the soft sheet and the touch of the warm breeze, and the touch of his hands and his lips and the touch of her hands along his thighs. She can no longer tell between his body and hers, as it seems to her she feels his delight as well, ever since the moment she flung her heart wide open she has been seeing him as he is, fearful for himself and for her, flustered by the change, and she can forgive him his tightly sealed heart, and even her mother she can forgive today, suddenly seeing her as a sad and neglected girl, like the mother of the abandoned child.

It seems to her this is what the child is asking of her, to forgive her mother so that in the fullness of time he can forgive his mother, and she will do this for his sake, for his sake she will forgive and for his sake she will take pity and for his sake she will indulge herself, send out through the open window a sigh of bliss and longing, a sigh that will skim across the heavy waters of the Dead Sea to the further shore and from there climb and hover on a northward course until it reaches the child laid in a small wooden bed in an overcrowded room, surrounded by children likewise abandoned, some weeping bitterly and some already asleep, and others beating heads on bed-frames, and only he will turn his eyes to the window and on his lips a smile will spread because her voice has come to his ears, and he knows he will soon be gathered in, soon it will be said of him: this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

Her hands shake when she interweaves her fingers with his and her head rests on his warm chest, her right hand clutching his left arm and her left hand his right, and when she stretches her arms out sidelong his arms are extended too, as if he’s been lashed to the bed, and she says, Gidi, I’ve decided, I’m going ahead with this, and perhaps she didn’t say it but only meant to say it, because he doesn’t respond, so she says it again, in a louder voice, and still there’s no response, and she adds nothing and takes nothing back, no explaining or justifying, urging or threatening, proving or promising, all these things she’s already done and now on her birthday all that’s left for her is to tell him what she’s decided, and wait for his reaction, which is taking its time. His arms are outstretched, his face she can’t see and the rising and falling of his chest are all that she feels, apparently he too understands that their words are rationed, and so he pauses, choosing his words with care. I’m sorry you’ve made that decision, he will say finally, his voice hoarse and muffled as if it’s travelled a long way over deep water, I can’t be a partner in this enterprise, and she will straighten her neck and look him in the face; he will be pale, almost transparent, and his eyes will avoid her eyes, and she will lay her head on his chest again, despite the rebuttal the mood of intimacy hasn’t dissolved, and she’ll place her legs on his legs and her thighs on his thighs, ribs on his ribs, covering his whole body with hers and her lips on his lips, and she’ll whisper, I need your presence, I need your signature, and once that’s done you’ll be free, I’ll make no more demands of you, and he will reply with a choke in his throat, very well, so be it. How fragile is the moment, as he’s about to disrupt the little tableau that she arranged with such care and he’ll extricate his fingers from her fingers and his body will wriggle out from under hers, he’ll dress quickly and put his glasses on and hang the camera round his neck and throw his possessions into a suitcase like a fugitive from a disaster zone, and when she asks him sadly, what are you doing, he’ll say, I’m going home, are you coming? And she’ll give him a long look and reply, no, I’m staying here, this is my birthday.

He didn’t see her progressively declining, losing a third of her body weight in the last third of her life, he didn’t see her skin rusting over the internal organs which had shrunk like withered fruit, the rotten fruit of a long and empty life, he didn’t see her sagging breasts and hairless genitals, her chin sprouting such a crop of bristles there’s no telling if she’s man or woman. Alone she has grown old, alone, and she has not been spared his suffering but he has been spared hers, and for this he would surely be secretly grateful, if he knew, and he would always keep it a secret, not wanting her to stop compensating him. Would he be capable of caring for her today, slicing tomatoes for her and feeding her with a spoon, changing the soiled bedding, did he do her a favour leaving her by herself during the onset of her old age or was this another vindictive desertion, maintained until it was too late to start a new life?

Really too late? Today she’s no longer sure of this, after all, this wasn’t about age but it was her interpretation of the passage of the years. Again she chose a strategy of avoidance, as before when she fell on her back in the dining hall, in a hurry to give up from the start, to cleanse her life of reality and leave only the unavoidables that always disappoint – the children, the children – and what else was there: hiking on summer evenings and private tuition for the local kids, who became more stupid from year to year, demeaning fantasies at the window, and her empty notebook, and all the things that must not be recorded there.

Perhaps you should go back to the kibbutz, her children suggested after their father’s death, and one after the other they collected their meagre belongings and left the house, Dina with Eytan, Avner with Shlomit; why don’t you come home now, delegations from the kibbutz used to urge her, visiting her from time to time, what is this city to you, how can you live in such isolation? The children who grew up with her, who scampered and cavorted while she still lay in the playpen, who mocked the stories about her lake, would arrive in an old van bringing apples, avocados, eggs, what do you have here? There’s nothing for you here, but she stuck to her new life even if there was nothing in it other than the denial of her former life. Her husband she did try to forgive at the end of his life, but she struggled to forgive the kibbutz even in its death-throes, angrily watching as the dream disintegrated, short as the life of man, shorter than the life of man, and all of it holes within holes, pinpricks on pinpricks. So this is your great story, she used to grin, remembering one of the few times her mother tucked her into bed, and when she asked her to tell her a story she refused and said, since I came to this country I’ve forgotten all the stories, Hemdi, because our story here is the biggest story of them all, all legends and fables are pale by comparison.

So tell me this story, she urged her, and her mother replied, but there are no words in it, only actions, the deeds of our hands are our story, you, the kibbutz, the land, and she accepted her answer with painful love, as she accepted her absences with painful love, accepted her untimely death from a recurrence of the kidney disease which this time subdued her easily, while Hemda was busy with her newborn baby, wondering how it came about that in her life in particular, birth and death were so closely connected, like twins.

One after the other and almost in their prime her parents left this world, setting in their own way a personal example, refusing to be a burden, and since she was allowed no opportunity to tend them, she tended her sick husband with devotion, seeking to prove to them she was capable, seeking to share with them her sorrow that they didn’t rely on her and didn’t believe in her, were ashamed to be seen before her in their weakness. It was only after he fell ill that she realised she should have lived beside him like this from the beginning, as if he might die tomorrow, and it was only then she understood how deceptive is the supposed life-expectancy of human beings, and she lamented this too as she cared for him assiduously, committing herself to the order of the day as dictated by his disease, adhering to one clear objective, although he didn’t know how to be grateful to her and he continued to complain and fling accusations at her almost until his last day, blaming her for both his sickness and his pain. It was only then it occurred to her that even if you’re accused incessantly it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re guilty, and she was almost grateful for this revelation which breathed new strength into her, and now she remembers the night of his death; there was a heatwave and she lay beside him on the bed and held his feverish hand, listening to his breathing. That night she washed his hair which was still dense, ash-gold and grey, and it gleamed above his tormented face and diffused a dazzling brilliance. A rhythmic grunting emerged from his throat, his mouth was open and threads of blood sparkled between his teeth, and she pressed against him and took deep breaths for him, till she fell asleep briefly and when she woke up he was no longer grunting. Late again. Reverently, she caressed the body at her side as it cooled, and the colder he became the more pleasant and reassuring was his touch, and she stroked his forehead and cheeks and lower neck and protruding collar-bones. His skin was turning solid from moment to moment like polished marble and she couldn’t take her hands from him, leaning her forehead on his chest as if it were a prayer-wall.