The Remains of Love (19 page)

And so her desire too was never reciprocated in full, since she wanted to share with her husband her love of the boy, the moments of grace and charm, she wanted to shower him with warmth and protection, so he would lack for nothing, all her actions were directed solely to this end. What a foolish aspiration, she cringes now under the blanket, so he would lack for nothing! Seeing her son before her very eyes, walking about the world for long years in steadily decreasing circles, heavy and listless, dissatisfied, his lovely eyes vanishing into his face like a pair of dying lakes.

Chapter Six

For some reason he’s in no hurry to retrieve his car, not that evening nor the morning after; he likes to see it in his mind’s eye parked outside the gate like his trusted envoy, keeping watch over the visitors, arrivals and departures, silently absorbing the grief – and this of all mornings, it turns out, Shlomit expects him to drive Tomer to school, as she’s running late, and he grumbles, it’s not that far, he can walk it, we were never driven anywhere when we were children. Do you think it’s healthy for him, hardly moving? Have you noticed how fat he’s getting?

He isn’t the only one round here who’s getting fat, she mutters, but I’m glad to hear that you’re looking at him every now and then, and before he has time to respond she asks, where exactly have you left your car? And he replies, in the garage, there was a problem with the windscreen wipers, and she’s sceptical, wipers? Since when have you needed wipers in the summer? To which he retorts, quite unabashed, how else do you think you keep the windscreen clean? But I wouldn’t expect you to know, when was the last time you cleaned anything? And when she tells him to shut up he notices Tomer peering in at the kitchen door, his cheeks flushed as if he’s been slapped, and he approaches him and smoothes his hair, his fingers recoiling from the greasy contact. Morning, young man, he says with an effort, the car’s in the garage, so we’ll walk there together, and that way we’ll get a chance to talk, OK? But when the boy looks up at him, utterly bemused, she cuts in, out of the question, he won’t be there on time if you go on foot. You should have told me before you didn’t have your car, I’d have woken him up earlier, now you hurry up and get Yotam dressed and I’ll take both of them as usual.

I don’t understand you, he protests, you complain that I don’t devote time to him, and when I say I want to be with him, you object to that too, but she’s not letting this go unchallenged: you have innumerable opportunities to be with him, his diary isn’t exactly full of meetings with friends, as you know, but why should this be at the expense of his schooling? Please, pick him up at lunchtime. And he groans, lunchtime I can’t do, I’m in court, and she spreads her arms in an expansive gesture as if saying, I rest my case, as if there’s a jury sitting there, but he’s the only one, their first-born son, his stomach bulging and his shoulders slumped. I do have friends, Mum, he mumbles, I just don’t like meeting them in the afternoon, I see enough of them at school, and Avner gives him a supportive look, that’s OK, Tomer, I didn’t have many friends at your age either, it isn’t the end of the world, and she pounces on the opportunity, even today you’re hardly surrounded by friends, so who are you to reassure him?

No one at all, he says, and anyway who’s talking about reassurance? He leaves her in the kitchen with the boy, as she slices a roll in two and inserts a slab of salted cheese as she does every morning; her fingers are thick and strong, nails bitten down like the nails of a child, and he thinks how these hands, with the fragments of cheese scattered over them, will soon be manipulating arthritic limbs, time to get up, move! she will bellow, urging her post-operative patients to leave their beds and take their first tentative steps, and for a moment, he feels a pricking in his heart over the lost opportunity for which they’re both responsible and shame takes hold of him, as if they’ve been collaborating in some ridiculous petty crime, theft of cheap chewing gum or a few sweets found in their pockets, and when he hesitates in the kitchen doorway, thinking perhaps this is the time to go to her and embrace her, hugging her shoulders in the shabby nightdress, she’s already yelling at him, why are you standing there? How useless can a man be! Get Yotam dressed, and he’s pushed into the children’s room, finding the little one sitting up in his bed with a miniature picture-book in his hand, and he’s muttering to himself in a didactic tone, like a teacher testing a pupil, what’s this? and at once he replies with satisfaction, it’s a house, and what’s this? A cat or a rabbit? He chuckles as he remembers his favourite cat, the one belonging to Dina and Gideon.

Daddy, it’s Daddy! he cries out when he sees him in the doorway, standing up in the bed and stretching out his arms to meet him, completely naked; the heavy night-nappy has come adrift from its moorings and fallen on the mattress, and Avner finds himself darting furtive looks around, Daddy? Who’s a Daddy? He lifts the happy body from the bed, his skin so smooth he almost drops him. How it always bemuses him, this morning jubilation, how long can you keep on going, he wonders as he rummages in the chest of drawers. Shlomit exploits his helplessness and dresses him in tattered clothes, turning him into a beggar whether he likes it or not, but today he’s going to the nursery in style, in minuscule jeans and stripy shirt, today he’ll be Daddy’s boy, and he remembers his favourite stripy shirt, the only garment he wanted to wear in his childhood, how they mocked him for paying attention to things like this. He carries him in his arms to the bathroom and washes and caresses his florid face, then grooms his black and still sparse hair with a soft brush. You’re sweet, you’re sweet, he murmurs in his ear, and the little one echoes back to him, you’re sweet, you’re sweet, and Avner puts his lips to the warm cheek; suddenly he wants to stay like this for ever, not go to the office, not take him to the nursery, just shelter in the shadow of this little boy who is all blessing and joy. Blessing and joy, really? It depends who it’s for, because now he sees the eyes of his first-born son staring at him from the bathroom door with a quizzical and accusing look, did you kiss my cheek like that, did you brush my hair as gently as that? And as if caught red-handed he puts the toddler down at once, and he utters a wail of discomfiture but then perks up and runs to his mother. What’s he doing in jeans? she fumes, who dresses a child in jeans for the nursery, it’s so uncomfortable, don’t you ever think about what you’re doing? And when he looks at his first-born son it seems to him these critical words are emerging from his throat too, how similar he is to Shlomit, with his puffy and resentful features, and he mutters, see you later, sweetie, his arm brushing the boy’s shoulder as he passes by him, then he grabs his briefcase and leaves.

In a dark jacket and collar and tie he makes his way, a morning breeze calming his skin; soon the chill will melt away but for the moment it’s comforting, like a wet towel on a fevered brow. Around him people are walking at an almost uniform pace, men, women and children, as if they’re all the loyal employees of the same firm, and they’re all on the same assignments, and he peers at the people-carriers passing by him. Yes, perhaps she’s right, most of the toddlers are wearing comfortable woollen trousers, not jeans, but it isn’t this that’s bothering him, rather it’s the feeling that has tormented him for years and he has no idea if there’s anything in it, the suspicion that the lives of all these others are much better than his life.

In circles within circles this feeling has enclosed him since the days of his youth, circles growing ever tighter around him, country, city, family, wife. Was it his father’s nostalgic stories about Europe, stories of snow and cherries, of grand houses with magnificent frontages and gleaming tramcars silently passing by, that instilled in him the feeling that the dusty country in which he was born and raised was only a meagre substitute for a real country, and his modest northern kibbutz was likewise a meagre substitute for a great city? And when they relocated from there, he found himself in the most remote outpost of the poorest city, and when he hitched his life to the life of his first girlfriend, he felt from the outset this was a pale imitation of a real love life, compared not only with the lives of others, but also with the life he himself could have lived.

What folly, his mouth is full of saliva and he could spit on the pavement, so intense is the repulsion, you will never know; you envy even those who are down on their luck, even that man who was about to die you envied because he got to love his wife with the full intensity of love, and now it turns out she wasn’t his wife and he’s already turning to dust, and still you believe his lot is better than yours. What is this? he asks himself in the voice of little Yotam, it’s stupidity, it’s impertinence, and again it seems to him he sees her from afar, her black hair and the sheen of her red blouse, how typical of you, chasing a mirage, looking out for a red blouse in the teeming streets, as if she’s always going to walk around for you in the same blouse. How typical of you to focus on the wrapping and not the essence, the clothes and not the betrayal; the betrayal is redoubled as the grief is redoubled, for our loved ones and for ourselves, but her grief is heavier still because even what she didn’t have she’s bemoaning, the chance she never had to live with him, to bear him children, all the years she lived without him and all the years she will live without him, and all these cars advancing in astonishing silence and in exemplary order suddenly look to him like participants in a funeral, the endless funeral of their secret love, to which he was a chance witness, but since the moment of his presence there, seeing what he saw and hearing what he heard, a mission has been imposed on him.

His mission is secret and not yet clear to him, only when he meets her again will it be clarified, and in the meantime he’ll be content with the knowledge that his car is still there, outside the house of the deceased, a knowledge that imbues him with a warm sense of belonging, as if he has struck a root, and from this root some young shoot of wisdom may spring, and already he’s debating how long he can leave it there, perhaps for ever? The fact is, he doesn’t really need a car; he can walk to the office, as he’s doing this morning, a quarter of an hour at a brisk pace and he’s there, while for the courthouse he prefers to take a taxi, and transporting the children around is usually Shlomit’s job, and his visits to the territories are becoming fewer. He hardly needs a car at all, so he can leave it there permanently, and from time to time he’ll pay it a visit, looking for signs of deterioration, until it’s covered in dry leaves and the tyres are flat and it will turn into a kind of monument. To what precisely, he wonders, to mystical brotherhood and the sharing of destiny? To the defeat of love? Anyway, the purpose of a monument is to perpetuate the victory and not the defeat.

When he passes by the café close to his office, with its attractive Hebrew name in meticulously pointed script, he sees dozens of people silently surrounding a notice, a blazing torch depicted at the side of it, and the rest a list of names: ten young names for the ten victims who lost their lives, assassinated here two years ago precisely, and he quickens his pace and lowers his eyes so no one will recognise him, in a situation like this, pain erases all restraints. There he is, the murderers’ lawyer, this has been yelled at him more than once and more than twice, defending the monsters who killed our children, although he never represented those suspected of attacking civilians unless he was convinced of their innocence, but how do you explain that to the grieving family, and he remembers that morning when Ali came to his office, frightened and desperate. You must help me, they’ve arrested Ibrahim!

Arrested Ibrahim? On what charge? he cried, prepared to summon up all his years of experience in the defence of the son of his Palestinian friend whom he had learned to love and admire in the long hours they spent together in military courthouses, and Ali mumbled, they say he was involved in a plot to bomb Café Sheychar, but I don’t believe it, it’s true he’s become more extreme lately and moved away from us, but terrorism? It can’t be so! and Avner said, Sheychar? his voice unsteady as if they were talking about his own sitting room. Shulamit was then on maternity leave and she liked strolling down there with Yotam, and sometimes he left the office and joined them there for a late breakfast, and the thought of his injured baby, weeping bitterly while his parents lie dead beside him – for some reason this was his immediate choice out of all the horrendous possibilities, little Yotam would live and the pair of them would die – was so painful he could hardly breathe. Sheychar, just down the road? he asked again, and Ali nodded, that’s what they say, and Avner shook his head slowly, staring at him intently as if trying to imprint his appearance in his memory, and not only his appearance but also his recollection of the many conversations they held while waiting for judgments, about cases, the political situation, children. How he loved talking about his son Ibrahim, the pride of the family, studying medicine in Jordan. I can’t, I can’t represent him, he said finally, I’m sorry. They stood face to face, in silence, all their years of acquaintance collapsing at once under the impact of this moment, until Ali turned on his heel and went, and he hasn’t seen him since.

Some time later he heard that the lawyer from Ramallah who defended the boy succeeded in extenuating his culpability in the plot, and for this reason he was sentenced to only twenty years in jail, but not long after the conspirators were arrested, another gang succeeded in carrying out the atrocity, one end of Sabbath, when he and Shlomit and the children were at home, but the café was full of young people, including the ten of blessed memory whose names are inscribed in stone, and he was going over and over the sequence of events, sometimes castigating himself for not defending the son of his friend who was facing life imprisonment. Who made you a judge? You don’t know and you’re not supposed to know what the judge knows and decides at the end of the day, and wasn’t this youth entitled to appropriate representation like anyone else? But all the same, my priority has always been to defend human rights, not the interests of one ethnic group or another, and what is terrorism if not the most serious assault on human rights imaginable? I’m not a sword for hire, going with the highest bidder, he used to justify himself, there are lawyers who will defend anyone, but I’m not like that, for better or worse. But most of all he was worried by the fact that the incident had actually happened in the end, and it had been impossible to prevent the terrorist attack at Café Sheychar – arrests, trials, even discarding his old friend Ali, nothing had made any difference, and facing up to this tragic reality he stood helpless, as if confronting some cruel fable for children, where the outcome is known from the start, and all the ramifications and contortions of the plot are incapable of averting it, and now he quickly crosses the street; more than two years have passed since that morning, was it then he lost his belief in himself?