The Remains of Love (42 page)

Most of the time he’s wrapped up in himself, and she has neither the power nor the inclination to ignite a flame in him, he is the way he is and he’s not going to change, she’s the one who needs clarification, not he, and she peers at him, reading in the fading light; novels he has no time for and only philosophical and scientific works interest him, like this book by a scientist who died recently, someone called Rafael Allon, until the book falls over his face and he dozes. Nitzan used to clamber all over him and wake him up with tickles and little kisses, and that’s something else that isn’t coming back, how can she force on him a damaged, aggressive child, and she gazes at the book covering his face, and from the back cover the portrait of a handsome man looks at her, a sensitive smile on his face, and she smiles back at him and thinks of other men she has known, full of
joie de vivre
, the kind of men who would have backed her enterprise enthusiastically, seeing it as a meritorious act, and most of all she thinks about her Eytan; looking back at him today she can appreciate his qualities, and while still surveying Gideon’s recumbent form in the armchair she sinks into a fantasy about the death of Eytan’s American wife. After all, people of their age are leaving the world, regrettably, like that scientist for example, and she who abandoned him twenty years ago will come to him for the seven days of mourning, and will stay there, devotedly nurturing his four children, compensating him for his old sorrow and comforting him for his new one, and Nitzan will join her, she has a kind heart and her compassion will be kindled for the poor orphans, while Gideon will barely notice her absence, she explains with a twinge of conscience to the face smiling at her over his face, and his routine won’t be affected at all. After all his needs are modest, and who can say he won’t find himself, in that typically offhand style of his, consorting with a new woman and subsequently acquiring a new child too. This part of the fantasy appeals to her less, and she feels a surge of anger at him and jealousy aimed at that woman, but what’s enviable about her; after all she too will be forced to accustom herself to the chilly blast blowing from him, and yet in spite of all this there’s something still left in the man that she isn’t ready to jettison just yet, even though she has difficulty explaining why; the moment his eyes turn to her and his face softens, her joy is so overwhelming that she can’t remember what it was that upset her before. It’s moments like these that she’s waiting for, and she won’t give them up easily, even if they are becoming increasingly rare, she’ll be describing a disagreement with one of her colleagues, or trying out an idea for an article, and it seems to her he isn’t even listening, and suddenly he’s on the case, resolving some contradiction at lightning speed, surprising her with a kind of natural, effortless empathy, and maybe this isn’t much, it definitely isn’t much, but these things are close to her heart, and now she wonders if she can give them up, and if she can be content with them, and it seems one option is impossible and so is the other, there is no middle way, and meanwhile no one’s mentioning the abandoned child who’s waiting for her somewhere far away, until it seems he’s been deserted again, again his hopes are fading.

Nitzan peers at her now and then, admittedly, but doesn’t ask any questions, and she’s just glad she seems more relaxed, more inclined to share her daily concerns with her, help me get ready for the test, she sometimes asks, handing her a book or a printout, or showing her what she’s written, and Dina is flushed with pride, how clever the girl is, how beautifully she expresses herself, and at once a backwash of regret will accompany the pride, what a mistake it was, what a waste, not bringing another child into the world. She still keeps some distance from her, not conducting long and intense conversations with her, sometimes emerging from her room with moist eyes, but Dina, her stomach constricted by the prolonged fast, has learned to be content with modest portions, she observes her behaviour tensely and tries to keep calm. There’s no need to worry; the girl’s eating normally, sleeping well, keeping up with her studies, meeting her friends, not drinking and not smoking, and overall she seems to be getting through this age unscathed – more than could be said for her, she who spent her adolescent years crouched over the toilet bowl forcing herself to throw up, the bitter reek of puke accompanying her wherever she went – and it seems to her the pair of them, her husband and her daughter, are appealing to her in their restrained manner, be content, be content with us despite our shortcomings, be content with yourself despite your shortcomings, no one is complete, no one will ever be fully satisfied, and she makes an effort to remember, what did she say to her then, in that miraculous conversation in her mother’s house, did she say don’t give up, or did she say don’t give up on my account, was this just her way of evading responsibility?

Long hours she sits in her watchtower this premature winter, while a small electric stove thaws the air in the little room with its glass walls, serving only to reinforce its reality: sweltering in summer and cold in winter. A slow and incessant movement is discernible to her, the quivering treetops, clouds floating in the sky like dead fish, birds on bustling wings, and the view is reflected in the glass door opening to the bedroom, until it seems to her she’s surrounded on every side by spasms of life, and apparently they’re all addressing to her the silent plea, stop, compromise, give up. Even the cat, springing into her arms, is purring rhythmically, give up, compromise, stop, you’re not going to get what you’re after, your life from now on will be a patchwork of resignations and compromises, big disasters and small delights, that’s the way of the world and who are you to turn it on its head?

Perhaps she really should be looking for partial solutions, she thinks, plucking up her courage and contacting a refuge for children in danger, offering her services as a volunteer, but to her disappointment she’s greeted with suspicion and asked what skills she has. No, I’m not good at creative projects, she’s forced to admit, and I’ve no experience of music therapy either, or P.T. What can I do with children? Read them stories, she mumbles, play simple games, give them love. At the other end of the line they say they’re recording her details but they don’t get back to her, and she’s embarrassed by the exposure of her delusional and desperate efforts to belong, looking for love and offering love, perhaps it is a man she needs after all and not a child, but for years she hasn’t encountered a man who aroused her interest. The only one she thinks of, now and then, is Eytan, who loved her so much, and one day when her lecture has been cancelled again she travels to his settlement, feeling some excitement as she drives up the winding roads of the Jerusalem hills, how green are the hills after the first rain, even the cyclamens are showing their pink buds among the rocks.

At the entrance to the settlement she asks for the Harpaz family and receives a civil answer, and so there she is, looking from a distance at the massive house. He married a rich American, they told her, but they didn’t tell her how beautiful she was; within minutes of her arrival a sophisticated-looking jeep pulls up outside the house, and a small and light-footed woman, her golden curls piled up casually, emerges from it, picks up a baby and goes inside, a fair-haired toddler of around three years old bounding at her heels, and Dina watches them with an ache in her heart; she looks perfectly healthy, much healthier than her and younger too, in a hurry and happy, she has no time to stare at the houses of others, to observe lives not lived. There isn’t much that’s wrong with the way she’s living, in her spacious house thronged with children, with a devoted and warm-hearted husband, and yet you didn’t want him, she reminds herself, his aspirations bored you, even then he was already talking about a house in a settlement and a big family, and you were rolling your eyes at him in protest, you spurned him, you spurned his love and in the end you abandoned him for a man you didn’t know at all, who ran away from you when you were pregnant, and even when he eventually returned, he always kept himself to himself.

You wanted an inspirational life, you wanted to write books, to lecture at international conventions, she reminds herself, you should respect the person you were then, frustrated hopes and all, and she gets out of her car and approaches the house, a stiff breeze tangling the heavy cloud of her hair, how cold it is here, much more so than in the city, the raindrops are bigger too and she’s already soaked to the skin. Maybe she’ll knock on their door and ask if she can come inside, just for a little warmth, how big the house is, there’s bound to be a temporary room for her, or perhaps not temporary, perhaps they’ll agree to adopt her and she’ll be their elderly grey-haired little girl. She’ll behave herself, she won’t bite or kick or mess around with electrical appliances, she’ll just sit by the stove and keep still; as that’s the way she always felt with her Eytan, she didn’t need to lift a finger because he’d take care of everything, whereas with Gideon the roles were reversed; in fact it was thanks to what he denied her that she learned to live in a fuller sense, since it seems that every couple is allocated a limited quantity of vitality, and it’s only the distribution that varies, with one taking less of it and the other more.

Hey, Gideon, she texts him a message on the way back, where are you? My class was cancelled, so if you’re shooting anywhere around here I’ll be glad to join you. Once she had enjoyed accompanying him on assignments, looking at the world through his eyes, and sometimes she even managed to help him, creating strange diversions so he wouldn’t be noticed, suddenly starting to run or stripping off her shoes in the middle of the street, and meanwhile he would be snapping away undisturbed, but now he doesn’t reply and she goes back to the empty apartment, her throat sore, stretches out on the sofa and covers herself with a blanket, and when Gideon comes she wakes with a start, shivering in the cold, what’s the time? Where’s Nitzan? And he says, I’ve booked us a place on the Dead Sea at the weekend, a room with sea views, for your birthday.

Really? She’s taken completely by surprise, that sounds lovely, I’d forgotten all about my birthday. His efforts touch her heart and she holds out her arms to him, come here, Gidi, I’m cold, I’m wet through, and he moves closer to her gingerly, sitting at the end of the sofa beside her. Where were you, why didn’t you answer me? she asks, and he says, it’s been a crazy day, I didn’t even see your message until I was on my way home, so how are things with you? And she says hastily, I’m all right, I just fell asleep suddenly, his hand is on her hair and suddenly she’s embarrassed by its drab colour; a man’s sunburnt hand on a greying head, a woman’s wrinkled hand on a lean and ageing chest, how we have changed.

Should I dye it like everyone else? she asks and he says, no, to me it looks fine the way it is, I like the natural texture, and she says, maybe for my birthday I’ll dye it, maybe it will do me good, and he smiles, no problem then, if it’s going to do you good, and it seems on account of the momentous nature of the issues that stand between them they’re incapable of saying anything to each other besides banalities such as these. Come and lie down beside me, she suggests, you look tired, and slowly he takes off his shoes, bending down from the sofa and she asks, do you remember when I used to do weird things for you while you were shooting?

Yes, he says, that was a long time ago, and she grins, I did something weird today too, and he asks, what did you do? His voice sounds distant and she stops herself, no point telling him where she’s been, she knows him, again he’ll say she’s out of her mind, again he’ll suffer by comparison with Eytan. Have you seen my book? he asks, it was here on the sofa, and she says, it’s still here, between the cushions, how does it work, outside you see it all and when you’re at home you can’t find anything? She hands him the book, the work of that dead scientist, and when he settles down to read it, instantly engrossed, she leans against the back of the sofa and stares up at the ceiling, it seems to her an invisible eye is peering down at them from on high, a man and a woman, a man and a woman and nothing else, their skin raddled and beneath it the calcium draining from their bones, what are they really capable of doing for each other? Will she strain her neck and kiss his lips, and what’s in it for her, kissing lips that are tightly closed, hermetically sealed, and again his proximity arouses bitter tension in her, a pale imitation of the proximity of mother and child.

Man and woman, what’s left for them to wait for? Two years from now they’ll be escorting Nitzan to the army recruitment office, ten years from now most likely they’ll escort her to the wedding canopy, and some day one of them will escort the other on his or her last journey, and in the meantime the creases between their eyes will deepen and their height will diminish, and in the meantime they will exchange words, the oral and the corporeal ones, eat their meals face to face and sleep side by side, dreading the disease that will fling one of them down and force the other to prove his or her devotion, and although this is a depressing thought, their situation is better than that of many couples who are doomed to separate or make each other’s life miserable, but this isn’t enough for her, and the fact is becoming ever clearer to her. She needs to achieve something, she needs a little boy, even if it’s as hard as Thumbelina described it, she won’t be afraid, she prefers to confront his difficulties rather than her own, thus at least she’ll bring him consolation, while herself she’ll not succeed in consoling.

She won’t be afraid because she hears him calling her, she know he’s waiting for her, she believes she can be more useful to him than to this one who’s lying curled up beside her. It wasn’t by chance he offered to take her to the Dead Sea, to mark her birthday with a room overlooking the Sea of Death. The death of their love is what he’s trying to make tangible for her, and even this isn’t such a big deal, even if it happens with most couples they apparently have more distractions than she has, or secret loves, and when she sees him reading with taut lips she almost hopes for his sake he has some secret love that’s bringing him joy and excitement; it isn’t only her little child who mustn’t be overburdened with expectations, mutual bonding within couples can’t bear too heavy a load either, like the moon whose light is borrowed, it needs radiation from outside, children, friends, events, while they, who were always content with lesser quantities of all these, were left looking out over the dark desert, over their Dead Sea.