The Remains of Love (35 page)

That’s enough, Nitzi, it’s a wonderful thing that you’re growing up, she whispers in her ear, and it’s natural that you’re moving away from your mother, and it’s good that you feel capable of saying unpleasant things to her and being angry with her, I wish I had been capable of being angry with my parents when I was your age, but her granddaughter protests, what’s good about it? How has it helped me, being angry? I hurt her and that’s why she’s going to bring in another kid who won’t hurt her, and what will happen when he grows up? Who is she going to adopt then? And Hemda strokes the fragile shoulders, that’s the way Dina used to besiege her bed with all kinds of complaints, but how much easier it is to calm things down when the complaints aren’t directed at you, since revealed to her now in the hinterland of her consciousness are all the words she couldn’t find for her daughter, like the objects discovered on the bed of the lake after it was drained, the shaft of a plough, the mast of a ship, lost nets. Look, Dini, see how non-existence exposes existence, she wanted to say, see how the stories of make-believe are engraved in the memory of reality, how loves unconsummated wander from generation to generation, a voice unheard turns to an echo, the voice of the woman who longed for fruit in her womb and she bathed every day in the waters of the lake, and he said to her, I shall be your son, I shall be your baby, and he flooded her with his waters until her womb was filled and her belly swelled and she gave birth to a water child. You see, Nitzi, when I was a little girl I had so many stories to tell, but in my stories there wasn’t enough love, too late I understood that the more people love, the more love there is for everyone, it’s a kind of wonder, like the miracle of the cruse of oil; when I was your mother’s age I already wanted to be left alone, your mother wants to be needed, you want both of these things, and anything’s possible.

Not true, nothing’s possible, the girl insists, if she gives up on this it will be terrible and if she doesn’t give up it will be terrible, and Hemda shakes her head, you’re mistaken, you’re so far from the truth; she imagines she sees the truth on one bank of the stream and the girl on the other bank and she needs to bring them closer together with her fingers, covering her eyes with her hands as before, under the branches of the pepper tree, how sweet was the game of the fingers. So much she has to say, what has she been thinking of all these years if not of this, mother and father, mother and daughter, mother and son, but the simplest way of all is without words, moving finger towards finger, give me your hand, Nitzi, see how everything approaches and goes away, in our family things happen too late or too soon, it isn’t down to you.

Oh, but it is, she sighs, I never wanted to have a little brother, I was happy with the way things were and I always felt sorry for my friends with their irritating brothers, I always told my Mum they shouldn’t even dare to think about it, and now because of me she needs to adopt some fucked-up kid from the ends of the earth, and Hemda strokes the damp cheek with her finger, I too was an only child and I so much wanted brothers, she says, we had a little boy on the kibbutz whose mother died giving birth to him and I so much wanted my mother to adopt him, I think it’s wonderful when you can take a child who already exists in the world and give him a home and love.

What kind of home and what kind of love will that be with a mother who’s totally insane and a father who doesn’t want to know? the girl complains, he told me if this happens he’s going to walk out and leave her alone with her lunacy, but I’ll be here with you, Grandma, I don’t need to watch this happening, and Hemda sees before her eyes the scrawny legs of her daughter at three years old, how she snatched her baby brother from his cot and ran with him as if possessed by a dybbuk, this is my baby, I’ll be his good mother. It’s true this is an extreme act, she says, but it doesn’t seem insane to me, on the contrary, there’s a lot of strength in it, a lot of hope.

I’m so tired, Grandma, can I sleep in your bed with you? she asks and Hemda lifts the blanket, of course, come and sleep with me and hide from rejection, hide in my heart, and when the girl snuggles against her she watches the rays of light softening between the slats of the shutter, it seems evening is approaching and pangs of hunger rise in her for the first time in weeks, the carer will be here soon, she’ll ask her to cook porridge for both of them, hot porridge with honey and cinnamon. Tell me, Grandma, the girl whispers inside her heart, do you think if my twin brother had been born Mum would be happier now? Would that be enough for her? You know he was the only one I wanted, he was the only genuine brother for me, and Hemda says, yes my dear, I know. It’s a pity we haven’t talked enough all these years, the girl sighs and Hemda whispers, it isn’t too late, I promise you, we’ll have plenty of time to talk, and she wraps her in the blanket and lays her hand on her shoulder, and that’s how Avner finds them when he arrives in the night at his mother’s house in an overwrought and feverish state.

Chapter Ten

Again and again he’s up before the judge who changes her face every night. Sometimes it’s his wife with her square features, her eyes flashing rancour and resentment at him, and he presents her with scores of documents, some of them already crumbling from repeated use. I did the best I could, he’s trying to argue, give me the benefit of the doubt, don’t blame me and I won’t blame you, we both made a mistake, got hitched to each other too soon and didn’t dare separate, come on, let’s salvage what remains of our lives. I disappointed you and you disappointed me, I hurt you and you hurt me, and I really believe all this was done in innocence, the innocence of children who have no awareness of what changeable creatures they are, and I’ve realised something recently, he wants to tell her, at dictation speed of course, so the stenographer can type it all and not miss a word, I’ve understood something about myself, I’ve realised that I don’t want to live without love, or more to the point, die without love, even if I’m fated to discover that to love and be loved is too much to ask for in this life, I’ll be content with one of those, and with us there’s neither one nor the other, we both know, so let’s cool things down, the children will benefit too, we’ll share their upbringing, relieve them of the burden of the struggle between us.

Why didn’t we think of this before, he wonders at times; in fact he thought of it constantly, but with the kind of defeatism that renders any turnaround impossible, and now that this has been removed as an ugly stain is excised from the retina of the eye, the sight is precisely the same sight but vision has changed, and even if he reminds himself again and again about the pains of separation, the unhappiness of the children and the stress of holidays, the fear of loneliness and the dread of old age, still sight is as clear as an equation to which there’s only one solution: he won’t and can’t and is under no obligation to try, living alongside a woman who does nothing but scowl at him and mock him in front of his children, and all her aspirations are focused on the project of proving to him that he’s her inferior, belittling his achievements and exaggerating his shortcomings, and if he exerts himself some of these nights when she’s sleeping beside him and tries to remember the good times, he can barely find isolated moments in recent years, perhaps during her maternity leave when she used to come with the new baby in the pram to meet him at Sheychar, but how fragile all this was, since one moment of distraction on his part was enough to arouse her bitterness, and as for him the same applied, if the truth be told: it didn’t take much to make him recoil from her, one crude gesture on her part was enough to send him back into his personal exclusion zone, and now as he is more and more obsessed with death it’s becoming ever more clear to him that this isn’t the way he wants to die. For the purposes of living this would be almost tolerable, apparently, but he wants to die with another woman beside him, kind and noble-spirited, who even if she doesn’t love him will consent to receive his love from him, and even if she doesn’t consent she won’t be capable of wresting it from him; sometimes he sees her there, sitting in the judge’s chair, and he lays his appeal before her, Talia, let me do for you what the dead man didn’t succeed in doing, let me leave my wife and my sons, redeem you from your loneliness and perhaps thereby redeem myself too, let me console you for an injustice that I didn’t cause, let me teach myself to love, because more and more he is realising to what extent love is detached from its object, and he certainly realises this where she is concerned, in her well-kept apartment, which he has visited almost every day this past month on some excuse or another, and he’ll always find her there alone, planting flowers in her little garden, sitting in the armchair with a book in her hand, or busy at the computer, and she’ll always smile at him her hesitant smile, and he’ll always feel how the void in his heart is being filled by her heart, heavy with love, and he understands that just as her love for the dead man continues to exist even after his death, so his love for her can also exist without any response from her, as if she were his dead lover.

Again he sits facing her and tells her what he’s been doing, about his visit to the Bedouin school in the heat of midday, just unbelievable how overcrowded they are, he says, but so eager to learn, perhaps some time you’d like to come with me, see the place for yourself, and she listens with interest, speaking little; since she moved into her parents’ house her main concern has been with them and pictures of her childhood are returning to her in full vigour, and sometimes she shares with him a little of the confusion she feels; in particular she’s focused on the dead man, and when she talks about him in her restrained way it seems to him again it’s him he’s falling in love with, and he wonders if this is really the only thing that unites them, but for the most part he doesn’t try to clarify anything, preferring to concentrate on the sweet delight that he feels in her company, a delight familiar to him only from his own company and that only on rare occasions, and when he parts from her he kisses her cheek, which is slender as a fallen leaf and doesn’t say when he’ll be back and she doesn’t ask, smiling at him the same reserved smile on his arrival and his departure, such that he doesn’t know which of them makes her happier, if at all, and it seems to him sometimes this blank tablet of hers allows him for the first time in his life a degree of relaxation, since he isn’t responsible for her pain and her desires aren’t aimed at him, he has nothing to offer her, only to himself can he offer the love that at the moment is turned towards her, but maybe one day it will be perfected and polished and elevated to the point where she feels she can turn to the other person who genuinely wants her, since the more powerless he is when confronting her, the more he feels arising in him an impulse of manly emotion, such as he never knew before except in youthful fantasies, a mysterious and comforting strength when facing up specifically to the grieving woman, who doesn’t want anything from him.

And yet sometimes it isn’t she who is there in the black pleated robe but his mother, and to her too he presents papers yellowing with age, pointing to them in silence, and the stenographer waits for his words, while his opposite number is quick to deride him, what is the matter with my learned friend, why the sudden lapse into silence, has he not prepared for this case, I will not agree to another adjournment, and he mutters from a parched throat, the facts speak for themselves, the witnesses have testified, I have nothing to add to my former submission.

My learned friend is holding this court in contempt, the lawyer sneers at him, why are we gathered here if he has no new evidence, and suddenly he notices it’s his sister Dina, her hair dyed raven-black and her face carefully made-up, before their mother they stand so she may judge between them, the three of them in black gowns, like a family of bats, but in front of their eyes she is ageing fast, already her mouth is agape and her head slumped, her skull almost bald and her eyes closed, and he wants to say words of valediction to her, but only a babyish whimper emerges from his throat, and he wipes his eyes with the edge of his gown. What am I to do with your love now, Mother? he mumbles, I always hated it, it constricted me, it drove me away, how dangerous was your love, combined with the full force of your loneliness and your misery, which I of all people am supposed to be assuaging, and here he is awakened by his plaintive voice, fearing lest all this has already happened and he’s finding himself alone, without wife and without children, in an alien and neglected rented room, and he tries to snuggle up to Shlomit’s body in the sticky night. Relax, nothing’s happened, just thoughts and since when have thoughts changed reality. Your wife is here with you and despite all her shortcomings you’re committed to her, and she’s the mother of your children, and you share an address and so it will be for ever. In your imagination you go the full distance, but will we see you daring to say to her one single word from all the speeches you are formulating here, he challenges himself and stands by the ventilator fan, which blends all their breaths into one giddying blast, and agrees with himself that thought is much easier than action and dream much easier than speech, and for the time being he should avoid taking any hasty steps, but when she sits beside him in the car in a black evening dress on their way to Anati’s wedding – as usual they’re running late, the clock on the dashboard shows 6:55 and the wedding starts at 7:00 and they’re still stuck in traffic jams on the outer city bypass – he knows tonight it’s going to happen, he feels in all his limbs and extremities the itch of imminent change in the offing, as if his body were the rickety track for a train that’s already set out on its way, even if he wanted to he’d be incapable of stopping it, all the more so when he doesn’t want to do that.

You should have driven through the forest, she reproaches him, at this hour all the exits are blocked, and he retorts, oh, really? So why didn’t you mention that before, you’re such an expert in hindsight, and she says, I was sure you knew, I didn’t think you were stupid enough to fall into this trap, and he hisses back at her, if I was stupid enough to fall into your trap and get stuck there for the rest of my life, why are you so surprised, and she says, no one’s keeping you here by force, as far as I’m concerned you can get up and go, we’ll all be better off without you, and he flexes his itching fingers irritably, unintentionally hitting the wheel with his hand and setting off the horn, annoying the driver in front, who signals back to him with a lewd gesture, and she grins maliciously, why are you hooting? What exactly are you expecting him to do? He’s got wings and he’s going to fly over the obstruction? And Avner pants heavily and opens the window, there’s no air in the car, she’s gobbled up all the air with her hatred of him, but a sweltering and polluted vapour comes wafting in from outside and she’s rebuking him again, close the window, what’s the matter with you?