The Remains of Love (12 page)

Because of that she lied to me? she asks, resting her cheek on his knee, she said there was no one here in bed with her, but I know there was, look. She holds out a sweaty fist to him saying, this is his hair – but her hand is empty, the evidence falling away from her piece by piece, and Gideon grins, his hands immobile at his sides, not caressing her hair. So what if she lied? Why are you making such a big deal out of it, everyone tells lies, don’t you tell lies sometimes? And she says, who, me? Not really, not to people close to me. Her face flushes when she remembers the lies she had told just this morning to that student of hers in the maternity ward – what a strange, unnecessary encounter that had been – and she rubs her cheek against the stiff material of the jeans. You’re taking this very lightly, as if you tell lies all the time.

Not all the time, only when there’s no choice, he says, but she feels his thigh muscles tensing and her heart thumps, where were you, really? And he says, I was doing a photo shoot in the Negev, and she looks up at him, so how did you get here so quickly? I drove fast, Nitzan scared me, when you drive fast, you get there quickly, but she’s staring at him in sudden doubt. Again her face is covered in sweat, hot vapours flood her chest, the interior of the skull, any moment now they will bore a hole in her cranium and black smoke will rise from there like the genie from the bottle. Days upon days he has been wandering the roads without her, sometimes accompanied by other photographers, journalists, some of them female, are you lying to me too? And he gazes back at her with the enigmatic look that she saw in the eyes of Nitzan. Of course, all the time, he chuckles, and the smile deepens the distortion of his features, giving them an expression of eternal mockery, and she pulls him to her although this isn’t what she wants; but what she does want, she only wishes she knew. To eradicate the pain is her desire, to excise it from her body and flee from it, to run light and ethereal in empty streets, to restore to herself distant knowledge that has been lost, certainty that has dissolved, curtailed hopes.

Without opposition and without passion he stretches out on his back and she drapes her limbs over him, this is the way I saw them, she whispers, she lay on top of him, they were really connected, her head on his chest, and this was strange because they were half clothed and half naked, and they looked like twins, not like a couple, and he sighs, it makes no difference, Dini, you weren’t supposed to see this, you weren’t supposed to interpret this, and again she wonders if he’s only pretending not to understand her, as once they used to understand each other well, but all this is unimportant now, because she has a more urgent question for him, and not for him exactly but for his body, lying under her stiff and motionless. Oh, Gideon, she sighs, how foolish it is to ask questions of the body, because it’s a liar too, like her body which desires not him but distant knowledge that has been lost, certainty that has dissolved; it’s certainly not this deceptive intermingling that appeals to her now, nor the calm and confident manner in which he has been taking possession of her body for close on twenty years, nor his cheery sigh of ecstasy, because it’s at precisely that time, when he’s responding to her, that she’s assailed by sadness, how hollow are these familiar motions when then there’s no new life at the end of them; even if this life isn’t destined to materialise there would still be the possibility, glowing with a precious light. If only we could have another child, she whispers in his ear, why didn’t we do that when we still could, what a waste, we had treasure and we let it rot.

Anyone would think you were sterile, he complains, still panting, you’re a mother, what difference does it make, the number of children you have? In Europe one child is quite enough, it’s only here that everyone overdoes things, as if more means better, and she protests, I’m not talking to you about ideology but about desire, I so much want to bring up another child. Their bodies are still fused but again that abyss is gaping between them, they have surely left it too late, and there’s no point in reviving the old argument, which led to wherever it led, and no point in laying blame. She wasn’t determined enough, his opposition was stronger than her aspiration and now it’s too late, and their bodies, still together and soon to be separated, are no longer capable of creating life, just moans of transitory pleasure; although apparently everything remains as it was, in fact an awesome change has taken place between them in recent years, and they’re still negotiating the terms. Their one-off coupling has lost its vitality, for ever and for always, but this doesn’t prevent other life combinations, of him with another woman, for example, someone to whom he might appeal, and his advantage over her, even if he doesn’t exploit it, enrages her again and she asks, who were you with when I called you?

A new correspondent from the paper, you don’t know her, he replies and straightens up, moving her off him, and she asks, how old? And he says, I have no idea, thirty maybe, and suddenly her jealousy of this woman flares up, not for travelling today with her husband to the Negev, if that is really where he went, and not for being fifteen years younger than her, but because she is capable of realising the one thing that she longs for herself, and as she lies here alone, hearing her husband turning on the tap in the shower, and the powerful jet of water that is washing her body from his body, she wants to extricate herself from the bed and join him, standing by his side under the hot stream, the way they used to do things years ago, and melting away the pain, but an icy chill grabs the tips of her fingers, spreading up from her toes, and she pulls the blanket over her; suddenly her teeth are chattering and her body is heavy and cold.

With an effort she opens her eyes and tries to move her stiff limbs, seeing him standing facing her with wet hair, buttoning his denim shirt. You’re awfully pale, he says, maybe you’re sick, there’s a nasty virus going round, causing nausea and giddiness, and she doesn’t respond. She really wants him to go, how strange that his presence intensifies her isolation, but he hesitates, when are you teaching today? he asks, maybe you should cancel, and then he remembers, so what’s happening with your mother? And she stirs herself, embarrassed, how could she forget so absolutely?

Chapter Four

Again he tries to ram the spoon into her mouth, forcing her to drink the sweet lake water, and again she’s sprawled among the reeds, surrounded by yellow water-lilies. The sun melts her limbs and they dissolve into the muddy, loamy soil, and he goes down on his knees and dips the spoon in the water of the lake, and then pours the liquid into her gullet. Drink, Hemda, drink, we have to drain the lake, spoonful by spoonful, until the water is all gone.

But I don’t want to drain the lake, Daddy, I love the lake, she protests, trying to keep her lips sealed, and he rebukes her at once. What has love to do with it? We need this land to grow wheat and barley on it, apples and avocado. There are obligations and there are loves, he says, and obligations take precedence, so drink up, Hemda, and she groans, but I’m only little, how can I drink a whole lake? and he says, gradually, there’s no need to hurry, we have all our lives ahead of us.

So all my life I’m going to be lying here like this, while you give me water to drink with a spoon? She’s horrified, is that what I’m going to do with my life? And he replies, pensively, perhaps not all your life, just until it’s dried up. The faster you drink the faster it will dry up and you can start to live. What a hopeless task, but in fact no more hopeless than other tasks that he imposed on her, crossing rickety bridges, driving a tractor and digging ditches. The way he stood behind the tractor with arms outstretched when she was afraid to go any further because of the gorge lying in wait for her at the side of the track. I’m not moving from here, he announced, if you put it in reverse, you’ll run me over! And she drove on, her hands shaking on the wheel, her mouth gaping with fear, and now too she opens her mouth wide to do his bidding, swallowing the water of the lake which is sweeter than the way she remembers it. She was always a little disappointed with the taste. The words fresh water had such a promising sound, but in fact there was only brackish water in the lake at that time, not fresh at all, and she planned to steal bags of sugar from the dining hall and sweeten the water with it, but she didn’t have the nerve, and it seems someone else has done this for her in the meantime, because now the taste is heavier and more concentrated than she remembers, and her father says, well done, Hemda, well done, have another little drink. Why does his voice suddenly sound feminine, feminine and hoarse like her mother’s voice?

Mum’s here too! she exults, opening her eyes wide to see her, but closing them again at once, lest the rare and precious vision dissolve, having to compete with another vision, that of her daughter-in-law Shlomit sitting beside her, a cup of tepid tea in one hand, and a spoon in the other, and she wants to return to the tall reeds, the white flowers adorning their heads like locks of hair, that’s where she belongs, not in this place whatever it may be, she has no idea – that’s where she belongs. How short are the days of childhood, and yet there’s no end to them; only with her death will her childhood be sealed.

What a shame, she sighs, discovering that her parents care more for her than her children do, more than her husband; they are alive and vivacious, dispensing fear and love, exploiting every chink in her consciousness to bring her back under their control, and confronted by them her Elik is falling away, and she forces herself to remember him now. The smells of the hospital lead her unawares to the last years of his life, how bitter he was, his jealousy more ferocious than ever, because it seemed it was only then he found the logic, her health as opposed to his sickness, her lengthening life as opposed to his imminent death.

He seemed timid and bashful, but at home in their company he would periodically explode into terrible rages, especially after they left the kibbutz and for the first time were four people living in one house, a family in other words. In the tiny pocket-sized apartment in the housing project overlooking the Arab village that straddled the ridge, when he was working unwillingly as a clerk in a local branch of the bank and she, deprived of the protection of her kibbutz, sometimes felt that the three of them were being held hostage by a dangerous invalid, or to be more accurate, the two of them, she and Avner, since Dina was always beyond his reach, out of the danger zone; a fraternity of the deprived united them and has lasted until today, years after his death.

How he used to attack her beautiful boy when he stood in front of the mirror, adjusting his hair. Out having fun again? he would scold him. Sit down and study, or nothing will come of you in the end! Only yesterday you were out at the cinema, today you’re staying at home, and she would stand like a lioness between him and her son, what are you talking about? He hasn’t been out all week, you leave him alone, and at once the familiar arguments erupted, and Avner would flee the family home with tears in his eyes, receding in the distance, and at weekends escape to his girlfriend on the kibbutz, and sometimes she would come to them on a Friday afternoon, short and crop-haired, exhausted from the long journey.

Against her will she accepted her, the living partition between her and her son, hoping he would find a more impressive partner than this one, or better still remain hers exclusively for a few more years, but Shlomit wasn’t giving up so easily, to this day she has held on to him with her fingernails, with her arms that have thickened, with her children, especially the older one, so like her, and when she opens her eyes cautiously, slyly, and sees her there beside her, firm and enduring, again the old forgotten grudge wells up in her, and she stretches out her hand and pushes the spoon away, sneaking a glance at the stain left by the liquid on her daughter-in-law’s white blouse. Where’s Avni, she wants to ask, or more to the point, where am I, but no question is heard, although she feels her lips moving above the ignominiously empty gums, her tongue sliding over them again and again, searching for the lost teeth, the lost years.

Really lost? How much anger poured out of her after his death, sitting hour after hour by the window and fuming, like the peat that burned perpetually in the depths of the marshes, what a betrayal, a husband who leaves the world too early or too late, abandoning her to the last age, children who slip away from her as they grow up, and this city, Jerusalem, where she so much wanted to live a new life, and now it stands before her indifferent, locked and bolted, almost hostile in its dangerous fringes, live in me if it matters to you, love me if it matters to you, but don’t ask anything of me. Unlike the absorbent and vibrant entity that is the kibbutz, which both snatches away and bestows, she found the city non-negotiable, repelling all expectations and accusations, putting them back in her arms like her dead husband.

But what stopped you living, what stopped you making new acquaintances, finding new work, after all you weren’t that old, it was just your stupid pride; the daughter of kibbutz aristocracy, a queen voluntarily exiled from the far and mysterious North, what does she want with teeming neighbourhoods, young families mainly and their children running up and down the stairwells where the smell of fast cooking hangs, fried sausages, burnt rice, meat cutlets, and their dissipated lives, billeted in cramped apartments above her and beneath her and on all sides.

Why don’t you go out now and then? her children used to nag her, you can’t go on like this, sitting by the window all day, the landscape isn’t going anywhere, you have nothing to watch over, until she started to pretend, and when she heard them coming in she would immediately sit down with the notebook in her lap, the notebook she inherited from her daughter, and now she sits up in alarm, the notebook, she tries to say, don’t touch my notebook, as it’s suddenly clear to her that she’ll never go back there, never again sit by her window, staring at the ridges that mask the towers of Bethlehem, and she sees them coming mournfully into her apartment and rooting through her possessions, opening drawers and closets as if searching for the abstract of their experiences, and how great will be their joy when they suddenly find the old notebook hidden in the linen closet, and how great their disappointment when they open it with an air of reverent awe and find that it’s empty.