The Remains of Love (17 page)

The lids are covering her eyes, and soon drowsiness will overtake her, it seems the baby doesn’t sleep that well at night after all, this is the time to pick up speed, the desert is close by and the heat is blazing. Left at the next corner, Abigail says in a small voice, and Dina clamps her lips, feeling cheated as she stops outside the crowded apartment block, only recently built and already showing signs of decay, and she gets out, pulls the pram from the boot, like a genuine taxi driver, and hands her the rest of the gear. Thanks very much, really, Abigail says, and where did you say your mother lives? A last attempt at striking up a conversation with her unpredictable teacher, and Dina mutters, not far from here, and drives away abruptly, leaving her standing at the side of the road, watching the car receding with a grateful expression. She has no idea of the danger she has been spared.

Everyone gets the baby he deserves, she smiles bitterly into the broad face of her mother; from under the pale shadow of the brows red eyes peep out like open wounds. Shall I cradle you in my arms, mother dearest, tickle your tummy, stick a dummy in your mouth, cover you with a blanket and leave the room on tiptoe, returning very quietly a few minutes later to watch you sleeping? How can it be that you’re the only one left to me, you never were mine and anyway you’re only the relic of a person. A twitch of a smile appears on the clenched lips and it seems to Dina that her mother, immersed in one of her fantasies, isn’t even trying to hide her malicious joy. All these years she has looked askance at her devotion to Nitzan, as if it was all aimed at her, with the object of showing her: you see, this is how you bring up a daughter, this is how you love a daughter, and how happy she will be to discover that her self-righteous daughter has gone off the rails too, even though she doesn’t know exactly how. And now the carer has taken advantage of Dina’s arrival to go shopping; she’s entrusted her into her hands as if her hands were the safest.

How naïve Rachela must be, thinking I can be relied on, she chuckles, there’s no person in the world who’s angrier with her than I am. Any intruder getting into her miserable apartment to hunt for ornaments or money to buy drugs would be more merciful to her than I would, but I suppose she is safe after all, because she has nothing that I want to steal.

Again a smile rises to her mother’s lips, an almost pleading smile which ratchets up the tension, and she rolls up the shutter; a strong southern light dominates the room, and she shakes the old woman’s shoulder. Mum, wake up, she urges her, you’ll have plenty of time to sleep afterwards, I need to ask you something, since it seems to her suddenly this is her last opportunity, as lucidity is rapidly fading, perhaps now her luck will hold. The sight of her face, locked into sleep, reminds her how she once came to her parents’ room at the regular visiting time and found her in her bed, and she was so unaccustomed to seeing her asleep she thought she was dead, and shook her tearfully. Mum, you’re alive, you’re alive, she shouted in her ear, and Hemda opened astonished eyes and shouted back at her, of course I’m alive, why are you making such a fuss? I’ve got a touch of flu, that’s all, and Dina was pushed away, chastened, from under the blanket. How strange and rare was the physical contact, and she remembers how little by little her mother’s aversion towards her seeped into her consciousness. This was a faint physical sensation of unwillingness that she was unable to hide, although she put an arm around her, and Dina was filled with compassion for her mother, being forced to endure her company, and sometimes it seems to her she feels this echo breaking out from Gideon’s body under the blanket, and she turns her back to him and cringes as if she’s been hit.

In the light that floods the room, her mother’s withered features look like dried fruit, windfalls from the tree, stained and cracked, but her vision is clearing and Dina sits by her bed solicitously. Are you all right, Mum? she asks with a strange intonation, lifting the blanket and climbing into the bed that was once hers, in the room that was once hers, huddled as before beside the body that has diminished beyond recognition. Mummikins, she whispers, do you remember Nitzan used to call me that? Perhaps you’d like to have this nickname too. I need help, Mum, she clutches at the body that exudes warmth, low but steady, as indifferent as a corpse and yet alive, I’m so lonely, this must be the way you felt when Dad died and we left the house; Gideon isn’t dead and Nitzan hasn’t moved out, but still I’m left alone. You were right and I was wrong. I should have had another baby and now it’s too late. I know there are worse troubles than this, but I feel my life is over, and cautiously she moves her mother’s arm and places it under the nape of her neck in a forced embrace.

Do you hear me, Mum, I want to hurry away to the kindergarten now to pick up my little boy, I want to see the happiness in his face when I come in, I want to hug him and take him to the zoo, I want to play with him and read him stories. You see, I have so much to give him, I have time and I have patience and I have love but I don’t have a little boy, and I see him in the form of the child who was nearly born to me, Nitzan’s twin brother, I see him so clearly, and all this time that she’s pressed against her mother she avoids looking into her face lest she be repelled by a stray smile, a flat look, and so when her voice is suddenly heard she’s startled, as if a third, external party has joined them, so accustomed is she to the silence of the old woman, who mumbles something indistinct, sounding like, you will find the child.

What did you say? She turns over on her stomach and moves her face closer to her mother’s, despite the rank smell of the breath that she’s exhaling, what child? How will I find him? He died in my womb after all, and again the voice is heard, you’ll find yourself a child, but her eyes have already closed, and there’s no knowing if the words were directed at her, or perhaps this was a random interlocking of their consciousnesses; ever since her return from the hospital her mother has been asleep most of the time, and hardly responding to anything, and it seems she’s stopped recognising her children, although there are moments when a look of acute discontent appears on her face, apparently directed at them.

Mum, explain to me what you meant, she urges her, how shall I find him, where do you find children? But a sound of snoring trills from her throat and Dina lays her head on the pillow beside her. When Gideon snores her sleep is disrupted for hours, but her mother’s snoring is somehow comforting, a last symbol of the life that still remains in her. You know, Mum, I’m so cold now that even your meagre warmth is comforting, she whispers in her big ears, the ears of an elderly elephant hanging on her skull with its sparse hair, but sometimes I’m so hot it’s your cold that I need, and sometimes I think I’m going out of my mind. Not long ago I heard about a woman of my age who took her own life for no discernible reason, and although I don’t know anything about her I understand her completely. I think she hanged herself, the way you hang a shirt in the closet after ironing, have you ever thought of hanging yourself? And when her mother responds with a faint gurgle she whispers, it’s OK, Mum, no need for you to feel uncomfortable, it seems to me we’ve never had such a good conversation, I’ve never before got so much from you.

Despite the warm breeze blowing in from the window her teeth are chattering, and she presses against the body beside her until drowsiness overtakes her. It seems to her that her mother is whispering to her, sleep, sleep, like that afternoon when she found her sick. Sleep, sleep, she urged her in the hope of hushing her, and Dina lay down beside her and watched her as she slept, her face flushed from the illness, her thick hair strewn about her head, and she caressed it again and again until she saw her father peering in from the doorway. Dina-le, get out of that bed and hurry up, you don’t want to catch something from Mum, she’s running a high temperature, and he pulled her out from under the blankets, and Dina was surprised, if she was running a high temperature why was she so cold, and even now he’s standing in the doorway, disrupting her sleep, did he have some hidden intention back then, when he extricated her from her mother’s bed as if this were the danger zone? After all she was his in a sense; in an accord that was never openly acknowledged between the partners, Dina belonged to the father and Avner to the mother, a bad deal on both sides, and now it seems he’s risen from the dead to separate them again. What’s up, Dad? Is old age infectious too, is death infectious?

Oh, here you are, Rachela answers her, I was just thinking, why has she gone out and left Mum alone, and when Dina sits up in the bed a little flustered from sleep, she shows off her purchases. I’ve got some lovely tomatoes. I’ll grate them really fine for your mother, with a little salt and olive oil, would you like some too? And Dina says, no, thank you, I really should be going, and she rises heavily, her bones aching, as if she’s just caught a dose of that flu from forty years ago.

Have something to drink, you don’t look well, Rachela urges her, I’ll make you tea with lemon, and Dina wonders how this woman, of about her own age, could take on herself the role of her mother as she understands it, as her mother has never understood it, and already she’s accepting the treatment on offer, sitting in the kitchen and watching the nimble fingers as they brew tea, squeeze a lemon and move a tomato back and forth over the grater, in a moment she’ll tie a bib around the old woman’s neck and feed her with a spoon like a little child. Who knows how many mouths she has already fed with these efficient fingers, which manipulate the kitchen utensils the way a pianist plays the keys, how many children she has swaddled and bathed and groomed and hugged, and for a moment she wishes she could be the child of this woman, about whom she really knows nothing; it was her sister-in-law Shlomit who heard about her from a friend and brought her to their mother the day she came out of hospital.

How many children do you have, Rachela? she asks, the appreciative smile poised on her lips, ready to hear the answer she’s expecting: five? six? – perhaps even more, but the fingers freeze for a moment over the grater and then resume at a redoubled pace, rejecting the ripe tomato and starting immediately on the next in line. I have no children, she admits with taut lips, and Dina is taken aback, that’s all right, she mumbles, feeling like a judge pardoning the defendant, and prays that her question will fade away. To her dismay, the shouts of the neighbourhood children returning from school suddenly filter in through the kitchen window, as if all the children they could have had, the pair of them, have gathered together for a surprise party in their honour, and Rachela sits facing her, wiping her fingers on an apron. I did have a little boy, she corrects herself in a low voice, but they took him away from me, gave him away for adoption. I couldn’t care for him, I was deep into drugs at the time, and they took him away from me.

When was this? Dina asks, trying to hide her astonishment, and Rachela replies, fifteen years ago, he’s now seventeen and a half. I’ve been working hard for years now, so that when he turns eighteen, if he decides to open the adoption file and meet me, he’ll see that I’ve sorted myself out and he won’t be ashamed of me. Have you any idea where he is? Dina asks and Rachela shakes her head, I don’t know where he is and I don’t know his name but I’m sure if I see him I’ll know it’s him. That’s all I’m living for, for the moment they tell me he’s opened the file and wants to see me. I’ve got the dresses ready, one for the winter and one for the summer, just so long as he isn’t ashamed of me.

He’ll be proud of you, Rachela, Dina says, laying her hand on her arm, thanks for telling me, she adds, I didn’t mean to intrude, I thought it was a simple question, but apparently there aren’t any simple questions, and there are certainly no simple answers, and she takes two saucers and doles out portions of the thick liquid. Like sisters we shall sit in the kitchen and eat and confide, she thinks, mysterious threads tie one person to another, mysterious threads guide our lives, like blind tramcars we roam the streets, incapable even of looking up at the sky, to see the network of cables above our heads.

In silence they sit face to face, dipping spoons in the comforting purée and raising them to their mouths like a pair of toddlers, until Rachela perks up suddenly, I must feed Mum she says, as if this were their shared mother, and Dina nods distractedly, they gave up my baby for adoption, Rachela told her, you will find the child, her mother said, and it seems to her that new tidings are flowing in her veins like an invigorating and health-giving infusion of blood, because perhaps at this very moment in this country or elsewhere a baby is coming into the world whose mother is incapable of caring for him, and all she needs to do is find him and clasp him to her heart.

The shouting of the children playing down below pricks her flesh like thorns. They’re no longer bothering to call her, they’re not trying to include her, how can she join in their games when she can’t walk, how will she jump and run when she can’t even stand on her feet? Under the pepper tree she reclines, playing with the clusters of red berries that hang from its branches. They’re stooping low and it seems that any moment she’ll be able to touch them, but a warm gust of wind blows them away, and she stretches out short arms, how high are the branches of the tree, it seems they will never bow down to her again, they are treacherous too, her red berries, teasing her and disappearing, challenging her from the treetops.

Is this what she does all day? she hears her mother sighing, find her a child, find her a child to play with, even a baby to lie beside her in the playpen, she can’t go on spending whole days alone, but her father disagrees. She’s supposed to get fed up with the loneliness and start walking. If she has company, it will perpetuate her disability.

Here’s her mother leaning over her, for a moment she’s very close and then she recedes, like the red pepper tree berries, teasing and disappearing, she isn’t a part of the household in her life, but a guest, leaving words behind and going away. Find her a child, she repeats after her, but what does she want with children, she hates them, their whoops and cries, all aimed at her. She wants them to shut up, she wishes she were the only girl in all the world. Again she hears them mocking her, what kind of name is Hemda, it’s a name for a cow, Hemda, let’s hear you mooing, moo moo – fluting their lips at her. Her father so wanted her to be like the other children and yet he gave her this weird name, she moves uncomfortably within this name, not meant for her and not saying anything about her, but perpetuating a moment in which she played no part but from which she came into existence, as if it were a short letter from her father to her mother, a one-word telegram. This was their rapture, their
hemda
, and she had nothing to do with it, so why does she have to testify throughout her life to their momentary joy? How stupid the children are, this isn’t a name for a cow, it’s far more embarrassing than that.