The Remains of Love (20 page)

Sometimes when he crosses busy streets, when he looks at the toys mankind has built for itself, cars and aeroplanes, weapons and explosive charges, poisons covert and overt, static and mobile machines, he feels sorry for people who have set out to improve their environment but are incapable of improving or fortifying themselves, and are unconsciously intensifying their vulnerability; as the prospect of coming under attack becomes stronger, so the ability to defend against it is reduced, to such an extent that he’s surprised every evening to realise that he still exists, that his house is standing, that since the death of his father in the final days of his youth and until the death of Rafael Allon he hasn’t had to face death in a frontal fashion but only in oblique encounters that left him feeling intimidated and almost guilty.

A sigh of relief emerges from his throat when he enters the cool stairway of the building, opening the door of his office to find his intern struggling with the water-cooler, trying to change the tank and embracing it as if it’s her baby. Soon she’ll be having a baby of her own, he reckons, remembering their conversation with some embarrassment, unless she heeds his advice, that is, and changes her mind. How did he have the nerve to drop all those hints, suggesting to her she was perhaps making a mistake instead of reassuring her in a straightforward fashion, telling her for example, these are the doubts that attend on any crucial decision, and they say more about the personalities than about the decision.

We’re going to be late arriving at the court, Avni, I called you but you didn’t answer, she chides him with an intimate smile, as if they’ve just woken up together from a post-coital nap, and he glances at his watch, how long has the journey taken him, nearly an hour since he left home, he’s been strolling along slowly as if the whole world is willing to wait for him, judges and lawyers, witnesses, plaintiffs and defendants. Sorry, I’m without my car today, he says, I left it in a garage, and she’s surprised, in a garage? You said you lost your keys. Never mind that now, he says hurriedly, we’ll just take a taxi, have you got the files? The new photos? And she says, of course, everything’s packed and ready, and her body too is packed in stiff fabric and he wonders how she’s managed to squeeze into her clothes, a black blouse with a white pointed collar, black trousers; he seems to remember trampling on these with his shoes last night but there’s no mark on them this morning, and in particular he’s surprised by her resolute attitude when they chat on the way to the courthouse, it seems she has no doubts about the validity of their arguments, not in this case and not in the others, while his own resolution is flagging, and it’s clear to him that if he were to tell her about Ali she would rebuke him sharply, and suddenly he’s appalled by a thought that occurs to him for the first time: was it Ali himself who planned the attack on the Sheychar, for the sole and exclusive purpose of proving to him that he was wrong, his son had no hand in it?

He still loves this set-up, the full panoply of the law, although he understands less and less what it is about it that he loves. Is it the meticulous order that instils confidence, where everyone has his place and his role, is it the archaic formality, of which there is no trace anywhere in this country but here, which reminds him of his father’s stories, and perhaps it’s the theatricality, since it’s nothing but spectacle, even if crucial decisions are being taken, even if the place looks more like a school classroom than an auditorium. It’s a fateful children’s show that they’re mounting here, disguised in black robes and indulging in etiquette from another world, rising to their feet when the judge enters, rising again when it’s their turn to speak, addressing one another with honorific titles and in terms of friendship and respect, while keeping an ironic restraint, and the words leaving their mouths finally take on their appropriate weight. Here it is impossible to use them casually, since every word is recorded, and so meticulously that there are moments when it seems this is the sole purpose of the session, they are all gathered here in their robes to help the stenographer document the event, that evening in Nablus for example, during the curfew, almost three years ago, when the light was fading and a Molotov cocktail was thrown at an armoured vehicle, penetrating an aperture and injuring the patrol commander in the face and hand, and later that evening when he saw three suspicious figures fleeing the scene he gave the order to fire.

The machine-gunner has testified that he saw a figure falling and two other figures bending over the recumbent form, and even then we didn’t know if we’d hit anyone, the commander is telling the court, because when you’re under fire the natural thing is to lie flat, and I thought perhaps this was a trick, and how could we know in the dark that these were peace activists from Europe, and all this the judge repeats in the first person, at dictation speed, as if she herself had been present in the armoured vehicle, peering through the slit at the dangerous streets, and when Avner listens to him, the young man with the close-cropped black hair, and open-necked shirt exposing a tanned chest, he feels a resurgence of that old grudge against them, against all those who have fulfilled the dream of his youth which is no longer a dream but a sensation of failure which has remained as acute as it ever was. He was almost like them, like these men, vulnerable and lethal, but his father’s illness wrecked the plan that he’d been working on for months on end, with incessant running and press-ups, lifting weights every morning. He survived seven weeks of training on the Golan before the news came through of his father’s condition, and he capitulated at once, and the army seemed ready to capitulate too; that unwieldy and inflexible body adapted itself with astonishing speed to the new requirements, spewed him out of its steel guts and dumped him in a base close to Jerusalem, where he did boring clerical work, and went home every evening to a fading father who didn’t need him, and to a mother who needed him too much, while his few friends and contemporaries went home only for short and infrequent weekends, and he no longer understood their language. And all of this he could perhaps have endured, if he had been convinced it was only his father’s illness that had diverted him from the ways of manhood, the arduous life to which he aspired, but deep down in his heart he had doubts, then and even now: was it not his secret desire to get out of there one way or another? It didn’t take him long to realise that despite the press-ups and the sit-ups, this steel crutch wasn’t meant for him.

How longingly he used to look during days of training to the rifle by his side as to his only salvation; at last he had a friend after his own heart, devoted and steadfast, and he hadn’t yet fully grasped the concept that the proven talent of this weapon was to kill and destroy the other person, since it seemed to him it was aimed solely at him, this was the one and only solution, and he had almost made up his mind to release himself in this way from the yoke and from the shame, from the desperate effort to fit himself into the frame, and he was only putting this off from moment to moment and from day to day, just one little squeeze, and in the silence that reigned thereafter he would perhaps find some peace for himself, since he had no other way of getting out of here, but then it happened; almost unbelievable how his mother with her acute senses was capable of reading his thoughts, of fulfilling his secret aspirations on his behalf, although sadly there was no relief in this.

He knew that first and foremost this was his failure, with his father’s illness carelessly tacked on to it, and since then he has looked with fear at men in uniform and men under arms, as if they were threatening him personally, and perhaps Shlomit is right when she claims that his excessive readiness to identify with the other side is fuelled by jealousy and frustration, because now when he stands up and confronts the defendant, with every intention of subjecting him to an aggressive and closely argued cross-examination, he feels suddenly absurd in his black gown, as if he’s wearing a dress, and to his dismay he realises that in his flustered state back in the office he forgot to change his flip-flops for black shoes, and when he tries to pace purposefully to and fro before the defendant, his footsteps make a squeaking and scraping sound, like a pair of millstones. He clears his throat to cover his embarrassment and manages to regain some composure, attacking the young man with a barrage of awkward details and trying to establish premeditation or carelessness at the very least. Was this the last of the daylight or darkness? Were night-vision instruments in use? How much lighting was there in the street at that hour? Did you not know about the activities of the peace campaigners, who had an office in the city? It’s inconceivable that you didn’t know, inconceivable that you didn’t see them, inconceivable that the street was completely dark.

Only in two streets in Nablus was there any lighting, the officer replies, a peace activist from my point of view is an innocent civilian and as such I make every effort to protect him from harm, but I was sure these people were terrorists. After the incident I was in action all through the night, and the next morning, even before my own injuries were treated, I was summoned to an inquiry, and it was only then that it became clear what had happened – and at this point the counsel for the defence, with her long and blackened eyelashes and jutting chin, interrupts him and proposes to present some photographs which were taken at the crucial time and which should settle two central issues which have been controversial, the state of the light at the time of the incident and the clothing worn by peace activist Steven at the time of his injury, to which the prosecution duly retaliates, showing the judge horrific pictures of the victim, whose face has been completely destroyed.

It was dark, the commander repeats, there was no illumination which would have enabled us to identify the figures. I put on my night-vision goggles and I saw three figures dressed in black who were endangering me, the safety and welfare of the unit was my first responsibility, and Avner persists, the lighting is a side issue, Your Honour, and it doesn’t always show up reliably in photographs, we know for a fact that they raised their hands and they called out in English, saying don’t shoot. They were dressed in fluorescent jackets . . . Every detail takes on fateful significance, as is appropriate when dealing with disaster; the woman’s red blouse, the man’s yellowing skin, the last words she whispered in his ear, don’t worry, you’ll soon be feeling better.

When the defendant steps down from the stand his girlfriend hugs him and her fingers caress his cheeks, and Avner wonders if any woman will ever caress Steven’s shattered face. He calls the next witness to the stand, and while he’s asking and enquiring, asserting and listening, interrupted and interrupting, from time to time he remembers his car, parked outside the house of mourning and keeping an eye on the visitors, arrivals and departures, and the path where the jasmine bushes bloom and waft their intoxicating scent. Soon evening will come down upon them, and soon he will be there too, and he knows with a strange certainty that this evening, on the edge of the cavernous wadi or beside one of the bushes, at the end of the trail or the start of it, or perhaps leaning against his white car, which already resembles a giant boulder, one of the very stones of the place, he will see her.

What a strange childhood, Dina says, taken aback by the sound of her own voice in the empty room, enclosed by glass, what a strange age to be, the age of decay is childhood without hope, sky without moon. She has never before felt so close to the very beginning of her life, when the body was still narrow and enclosed and the mind had not yet woken up, hiding alone and almost indifferent within its shell, listening to repressed sounds, not yet connected to any other mind in that enlivening and painful linkage.

Is it there we are supposed to return to, she wonders, with what remains of our love, what remains of our strength, after the prodigious effort of raising and tending a family, after our children have grown up and our husbands have aged and our parents gone to another world, to return to that unripe, self-centred and enclosed existence, to bind up in silence the wounds of the betrayals we have suffered, the desertions we have suffered, binding and releasing, releasing and binding? But in our childhood we held in our hands a luxuriant sphere, the great and impressive sphere of the future, whereas now our hands are empty and it seems this has happened all at once, in the space of a few months our future has disintegrated and crumbled into dust.

A viscous, unfamiliar fatigue takes hold of her in the mornings, sticking her limbs together and slowing her movements, while at night her sleep is plundered by mordant chasms of wakefulness, this isn’t the heavy blanket of sleep that’s spread over her but a net full of holes. How strenuous the effort to sleep has become, and how will she stand up tomorrow in front of her students who are also tired; they too have nights of disturbed sleep, only they are awakened by beloved babies whereas she is awakened by the baby she never brought into the world, and she springs up drenched in sweat, her heart pounding and a blazing torch igniting in her chest, and it seems any moment a flame will emerge from her throat, a tongue of fire that will take hold in the corners of the house, and she strips off her nightie in the dark, kicking at the burning blanket, turning on the light and changing the damp pillowcase, but almost immediately her toes are quivering in the cold, and she fumbles for the clothes she stripped off and left scattered around the bed, trying to tug them out from under Gideon’s body, and he wakes grumpily and slinks away to the single bed in his darkroom. When he abandons their bed the last vestige of sleep disappears from the room and again she turns on the light, pulling out a book from the shelf, but as she lies on her back and holds the book open, hanging over her is the flesh of her arms wrapped in raddled skin, and she stares at the strange sight in bemusement: what is this arm to her, reminding her of her mother’s arm, and what are the powerful currents buffeting her body, boiling lava and melting snow.