The Remains of Love (7 page)

No one has touched the bed, he’s relieved to see, as if the bed with his mother in it has become one of the regular fixtures of the hospital, planted in the floor like those benches in the sitting area, but from the end of the corridor his sister is running towards him, and on her face is the expression he’s so accustomed to seeing on the face of his wife, a blend of disgust, rejection and anger, and she pants at him, are you insane? Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you all over the hospital, I thought something had happened. And he too is still panting, confronting this paragon of forthright self-righteous femininity, and he looks down and mumbles, I met a friend here and I went outside with him for a bit, why are you making such an issue out of it, and they’re standing facing each other on either side of the bed, with the body that brought them together back then binding them now whether they like it or not, but also erecting a partition in its typical fashion – when his downcast gaze meets the upward gaze of his mother, a surprisingly clear look, excited, almost ecstatic.

Daddy? her toothless gums mumble at him, and he looks around him in embarrassment, as if it wasn’t to him that the syllables were addressed, as if expecting to see there the legendary father whom he never knew, rising from the dead and hurrying to take his elderly daughter in his arms, but she fastens her eyes on him and repeats, Daddy? – extending to him the apologetic smile of a child trying to evade punishment, her hand reaching out for his and he recoils, Mum, it’s me, Avner, and Dina’s here too, he adds, urging his sister to back him up, to help him draw their mother with a chain of words into their world, but his mother ignores his words and beams at him in wonderment and joy, nothing can destroy her happiness, the undiluted happiness that he sometimes identifies on the face of his youngest son, the absolute embodiment of all delights, her fingers avidly caressing his arm, I’ve missed you, she whispers, it’s been so long, I was afraid you weren’t coming back.

Over the rail of the bed he sees his sister breathing heavily, her dark eyes moist, and she clutches her mother’s other hand, this is Avner, he isn’t your father, she says in her authoritative tone, as if standing in front of a class, we’re in the hospital, you had another fall, do you remember? But the old woman rejects her words angrily. Leave me alone, I didn’t ask you, she says, let me be alone with him, and she shakes off her daughter’s hand and holds his arm with a vigour which reminds him for a moment of the healthy-bodied woman she once was.

We need to take her back to casualty, and talk to the doctor, he whispers, it seems there may be some damage to the brain after all, and they move along the bustling corridors, a middle-aged mother and father and their geriatric baby, who suddenly bursts into tears, with a plangent wail like a siren, rising and falling, her crumpled face awash with tears. He never saw her like this, and really it’s no wonder, after all he didn’t know her as a child, and listlessly he goes on dragging the bed with its squeaking wheels. Mum, relax, he mumbles, everything’s going to be all right, you’ll soon be feeling better, unconsciously repeating the dubious promise that he heard through the curtain just a little while ago, and he looks for a little encouragement in Dina’s face. Just a moment ago she was there, pushing the bed along from behind, her curls shading her brow, her long fingers, like the talons of a bird of prey, caressing the bed rail, and suddenly there’s no sign of her.

With pounding heart Dina hurries to her car, eyes smarting. It’s wrong to feel offended by children or by the elderly, she knows that, but these are specifically the ones she feels offended by, by her daughter and by her mother, who totally negated her existence, holding on to the arm of her brother while pushing her away brusquely. If it were possible to attribute this to old age or to the fall, that would certainly be some mitigation, but old age or the fall has only given prominence to what she has always known, what her mother has tried to hide from her until this morning, when it was no longer possible to pretend; her feelings like her exposed breasts, revealed in all their shameful ugliness.

Ferocious heat enfolds her limbs when she leaves the air-conditioned corridors, and she sighs, these heatwaves of early summer, from year to year they become harder to endure. It seems to her that her flesh is scorched, and sizzling audibly, and she looks in alarm at her exposed arms, surely this is inconceivable, it’s just the intense heat of the hamsin season, it will pass soon enough, any woman of her age recognises this. I’m going out now, my darlings, I’ll be home soon, she hears the young woman beside her trying to reassure her impatient children. Another half-hour if there are no hold-ups, she sends the promise via her mobile, and Dina glances at her with envy, how she misses that sensation, knowing someone is waiting for her at home. Enjoy it, she wants to whisper to the woman who is going to the car in front of hers, enjoy it even if gets tiresome sometimes, it won’t last for ever, and she takes her own mobile out of the briefcase, she needs to talk to Nitzan, to hear her voice, it feels like weeks since they met.

I’ll be home soon, dear, she whispers into the phone, but the girl doesn’t answer, and yet it seems to her, to Dina, that it’s her she’s returning to, getting into her car and driving impatiently, as she used to when Nitzan was small, hurrying home when classes were over, the knowledge that her daughter was waiting for her coiled around her like a rope, a noose to which she gladly proffered her neck. Sometimes she used to run along their street, really run, a little shamefaced, how much meaning there was in every step. Mum! You’re home! The little girl would leap up to greet her, taking her by the hand and insisting on showing her the marvellous things she had been doing, little treasures of happiness she would find among the wooden bricks, among the furry animals and the tattered books, and even when Nitzan was a little older, turning into a serious and grown-up girl, she would run to meet her from her room, telling her stories, showing her pictures and exercise-books. How nice it was coming home, even if she was tired after a long day’s work, even if what awaited her was another white night of work to be checked and marks to be awarded. How she longs for such pleasure, and suddenly it seems to her it’s still in her hands, she can again be that woman who is awaited with love. Nitzan must already be at home, perhaps she’ll open the door to her and fall into her arms, and she will feel how a candle that was extinguished in her has been relit, and she will gladly cook a light meal for the two of them and they will sit together in the kitchen. You see, I don’t need much to make me happy, she explains aloud, just talking with the girl in the kitchen, feeling I’m needed by her, not loved necessarily, just needed.

The first moment of an encounter dictates the way it will continue, she says aloud, I shall go into the house smiling, as if I’ve had good news, turn to her with some light banter. How absurd this is, I’m preparing for a meeting with Nitzan as if we were talking about something fateful and crucial – and this is my daughter, my bones and my flesh, but the absurdity doesn’t put a smile on her lips; rather it plunges her into a depression that she tries to alleviate with simple decisions, peering in the interior mirror and smearing on lipstick, blackening the eyes with a make-up pencil. Nitzan is waiting for her, of that there is no doubt, even if she doesn’t know it she’s waiting for her, so she’ll go into the house with a smiling face, no hint of reproof or petulance, and that way she’ll get her back.

There’s her satchel thrown down in the lobby, beside it a superfluous sweater that she forced her to take yesterday, giving off a barbecue smell of charcoal and incinerated potatoes, those are her sandals, and she herself must be in her room. Nitzi, she calls out in a sprightly voice, would you like something to eat? And when the girl doesn’t answer she opens the door of the room, and the smile that she prepared in advance remains in place, her lips drawn tight, when she sees her daughter’s naked back laid motionless on the exposed chest of a fair-haired boy, his eyes closed. On the single bed they are huddled together, clinging to each other like twins in their mother’s womb, and while she dithers in the doorway, stunned, the boy’s eyes open and scan her awkwardly, and then in response to the smile that has congealed on her lips, a smile is transmitted to her over her daughter’s back.

Taking small steps she moves out of there, her gaze fixed on his face, and without turning her back on him, as if this were a holy place, she retreats stumbling to the kitchen and stands again by the window, her elbows on the cool marble. With shaking hands she washes her face in the kitchen sink, full as it is of dirty utensils, her hair dipping in a greasy frying-pan, and while it’s still shedding fetid liquids on her blouse she goes back there, clutching the door-frame and peering in, her eyes scanning the short legs of the bed, the colourful sheet decorated with figures from fairy tales, the feet lying side by side, like two pairs of twins, her daughter’s slender ankles beside the boy’s thighs, and her cut-off jeans against his flanks, her smooth and milky back, her angular shoulders, her arms hugging his chest, while his arms are laid now at the sides of his body and his eyes are closed again, as if the vision that he saw, of a grey-haired woman staring at him in horror, was a marginal interlude in an otherwise pleasant dream, but even with his eyes closed it seems to her he’s watching her, and even when his lips are closed it seems to her, with the same crazy certainty that she identified this morning in her mother, he’s repeatedly mumbling, Mum.

Gideon, she whispers from the bedroom next door, putting the phone to her lips and he’s tense at once, has something happened? She says no, everything’s fine, forgetting even to mention her mother’s admission to hospital, but Nitzan, she adds and hesitates, wondering how to dress it up for him, Nitzan is here with someone, they’re asleep in her bed, it’s so strange . . . She tries to steer him cautiously towards the simpler extreme of the experience she’s had, and Gideon chuckles, oh, yes? Great, so she’s finally bringing him home, I told her she could take the initiative and not wait for him, and Dina seizes on this scrap of raw information, hard to chew though it is. What, she told you she had someone? She didn’t tell me anything, Gideon says. She met some guy called Noam not long ago, a friend of Shiri’s brother.

Shiri’s brother? she repeats irritably, then he must have done his army service, at least five years older than her, is that acceptable to you? she sneers, hiding behind the tiresome details which aren’t the main issue for her; she knows precisely how old he really is, after all he’s Shiri’s twin. In the background she hears Gideon telling someone, I’ll be with you in a moment, it’s Dina, pronouncing her name in a somewhat meaningful tone. Who are you with? she asks, feeling suddenly suspicious, and he replies, I’m in the middle of a photo shoot, Dini, is there anything else? and she adds, yes, my mother’s in hospital, she fell over and knocked herself out, and this time he sounds more alarmed than she is, demanding to know the details. I’ll call in there on my way home, he promises her, although this isn’t the promise she was hoping for.

Oh, Gideon, she sighs, putting down the phone and stretching out on the bed fully clothed. The warm breath that she detected in his voice arouses longing in her, and a sour taste in her throat as if she’s been drinking something contaminated, a drink she put a lot of time and effort into preparing, what a waste, and already too late, and it seems she herself doesn’t know what she’s referring to: too late to fall in love with each other, too late to bring a child into the world, too late for new life, but this contamination, wasn’t it always there? Oh, Gideon, if only we could start again, I’d do everything differently.

Like a blank canvas the past is spread out before her, giving itself into her hands. It’s forbidden to start on this, she knows, but still she goes ahead and devotes herself to this dangerous game of hers, as when she was a child, lying on her bed in the children’s house and imagining the life awaiting her, the future that would set her apart from the kids all around her, who didn’t read books, weren’t as gifted academically as she was, but now this turns into torture, to go back and imagine with such precision what could have happened and didn’t happen, and her fault alone. Here she is, sitting with Orly and Emmanuel in the university cafeteria as almost every evening, keeping their secret faithfully; it doesn’t even occur to Emmanuel that she knows and on the face of it he loves and admires the pair of them in equal measure, his two teaching assistants, his star pupils. He’s comfortable sitting between them, mocking the students who pass by them with reverent expressions on their faces, inventing nicknames for them and imitating their halting speech, his eyes twinkling wickedly under the silver quiff, and as she’s choking with laughter a morsel of sandwich sprays from her mouth on to the collar of his nicely ironed shirt, and he reassures her, it doesn’t matter, we’re like a family here, and Orly grins, Dina doesn’t know what a family is, she grew up on a kibbutz, and Emmanuel says, there isn’t anyone among us who doesn’t know, everyone learns at his own pace.

He was then exactly her age now, Professor David Emmanuel, eminent historian, did he too realise it was too late? Or did he still not understand anything, since from his point of view all of this could have carried on if she had not curtailed their future with one sentence, three futures that were closely intertwined; she bit the hand that caressed when for a moment it stopped caressing. That evening too they were sitting there after a day of teaching, as a violent rainstorm lashed the city, threatening to drill holes in asphalt roads and stone roofs. At once she sensed that something wasn’t as it had been the day before yesterday, since Emmanuel was pale, running a cold and blowing his nose incessantly, turning the end of it red, and Orly was quieter than usual and refusing to eat, and no wonder, after all she knew what he was going to say. Alas, girls, he sighed, you wouldn’t want to be in my shoes just now, and when they looked at him quizzically he wiped his nose again and coughed. I’ve been given an impossible task, he said, I have to choose one of you, our team is shrinking, only one of you can have tenure here for the coming year.