The Remains of Love (26 page)

You’d be surprised, he says, just how quickly the years pass, and at once he adds, I believe it’s my duty to wake him up when he’s obsessed with shit, eating it or watching it, that’s how I show him I value him and I’m not giving up on him, and you don’t back me up in this! But his voice sounds to him weak and defensive, as in the courtroom this morning – when justice abandons you, you stay abandoned – and he tries to formulate an attack, why don’t you take a close look at what you’re doing, he’s caught up now in the flow of his words, becoming more and more convinced, you’re the one creating distance between us when you defend him against me as if I’m a monster, that’s the worst damage, you’re not only weakening him, you’re also depriving him of a dad, the only dad he has! he adds from the heart, unnecessarily, as if all the other kids can choose from a range of dads. What did I say to him, anyway? he presses on, there was no need for you to intervene! You’re the one who’s incapable of abandoning the symbiosis between you, and you’re prepared to sacrifice me for the sake of it, and worse than that, your beloved son too! And she leaps up from the sofa as if stung by a scorpion, I’ve heard enough of this rubbish! You’re confusing me with your psychotic mother! I have no interest in keeping him for myself, on the contrary, I just want the two of you to be closer. He feels his stress levels rising; now she’s thrown his mother into the fire, excellent combustible material in all conditions, soon to be followed into the flames by his father.

Your fancy declarations don’t impress me, he snaps at her, what counts is what you do, and the way you stand by him and oppose me is destructive and absolutely unnecessary, and why bring my mother into it? She had good cause to defend me, as my Dad’s aggression towards me in those years was extreme. Today I’ve no doubt it was connected with his disease; he had a brain tumour and it changed his personality completely.

Then perhaps you’ve got a brain tumour too, she suggests with an ugly smile, gathering her legs into an oriental posture, her thick thighs exposed as her dress rides up, and he stands before her trembling with rage, how unloved am I, if he only dared he would put a hand to her mouth and wipe that smile from her lips, how unloved am I, and he turns his back on her and goes out. Where will he go now? He longs to sit for a while on the balcony, to breathe the air of a cool summer evening, one of the unique pleasures that this city has to offer on a lavish scale, but the iron shutter is already closed and if he opens it the boys might be woken up, and he strips in the dark bedroom and goes into the shower with a towel round his waist, as if afraid of being exposed to her in his nakedness, and only when the water streams over his shoulders does he let go of the towel and it falls to the floor of the shower and absorbs the scalding water that seethes with disappointment and hatred. What’s the matter with her, how has she become so malicious, it seems to him her heart is sprouting poisonous weeds, and is this just down to neglect? He sees himself uprooting them with a firm hand, one after another. Perhaps you’ve got a brain tumour too! She’s prepared to sacrifice his health on a whim, just so she’ll be seen to be in the right, and he remembers his father standing before him and yelling, shorter than him but bristling with anger, like a spiteful cat that doubles in size, out having fun again? Done your homework yet? Nothing will come of you, nothing, nothing is what you are, and one time when he stood in front of the mirror and combed his hair, how handsome he was then, even he himself recognised this and he smiled at his reflection, and then the angry face popped up behind him. You Nazi! he yelled at him, and Avner turned to face him, stunned. You’re crazy, he mumbled, I’ve got a crazy dad, what do you want of me? And at once his mother appeared from the kitchen, get out of here right now, she shouted at his father, brandishing the big wooden spoon in her hand, if that’s the way you talk to your son you’re not living here any more, and his father wasn’t giving in that easily, how do you intend to support your family if I’m not living here? You can’t go on dreaming for hours by the window and scribbling in your notebook.

I’ll get by very nicely without you, she replied, I just want you out of here now, but it was the son who went, packed a few clothes and travelled to the kibbutz, to Shlomit, who caressed and consoled him, and it was impossible to imagine then that twenty-five years hence she would be using this pain against him in such a shameful fashion, just as it was hard to believe it was his father’s hidden disease that made his responses extreme. Could it really all be blamed on the tumour? It’s a fact he never attacked Dina, it was only him he envied, begrudging him his youth, his beauty, his mother’s love, and he punished him for all this by denying him his love, and again he remembers his mother’s stories about fishing in the lake, how they used to trick the fish with a trawling net, a double net with crude and tight mesh, and any fish making a heroic escape from the first net would immediately be caught by the second.

The water gathers up his tears and sweeps them away into the convoluted drainage system of the building, spoilt kid, mummy’s boy, again he hears the scorn of the children and he tries to suppress his weeping, crushing the slippery bar of soap with his hand, and when he starts meticulously soaping his body his paunch protrudes between him and his genitals and thighs and feet, so he can’t see the lower segment of his body at all, as if it were suspended in space, out of reach, and giddiness attacks him, and he leans against the wall of the shower and pinches his flesh angrily. It’s as if his stomach is nothing but a tumour that has attached itself to his body, and he remembers with jealousy the slim build of the dead man on the last day of his life; his yellowing skin hung on his face and yet he was beautiful and boyish, this is the slimness he aspires to and he’s going to get it, he swears to himself, and at once an extra oath is added, he’s going to leave her, he’s never getting any closer to this woman, and it makes no difference how upset the children will be, no difference that the little one is so little and the bigger one is just starting to grow up, there’s no good time for separations and he can’t do this any more, he wants to be loving and loved, like the deceased on his last day, and before he sees in his mind’s eye the packing cases filling the house and the misery of his sons, he turns off the hot tap and turns on the cold, surprising himself with this courageous act and all his flesh tingling.

But when he emerges, treading on the cold and wet towel and wrapping himself in another, she’s already in their bed, wearing the nightdress he bought her one birthday, its blue colour has faded to yellow following repeated laundering and inadvertent over-exposure to the sun, her eyes peer at him over the binding of an open book, and he hurriedly gets into the bed, turns his back on her and pulls the blanket over his head as his son did, next he’ll be furtively picking his nose. How sharp the sense of smell becomes when there’s no partition between you and your body, although he’s only just soaped himself he senses an unpleasant smell rising from him, heavy and pungent, thus he apparently lay stinking in his mother’s womb day after day, and thus he will stink in his grave, and when he feels her finger on his back through the blanket he freezes like a trapped animal, if he plays dead perhaps he’ll be left alone.

Leave me alone now, he moans, I don’t want to talk to you any more, and she grins a throaty grin, who said anything about talking? Her breasts are pressed against his shoulder, I’m sorry, Avner, maybe I was exaggerating a bit, I’m just worried about Tomer, I’m not sleeping at night for worry, and instead of being beside me you’re against me, and he moves the blanket down from his face, I’m not against you, it’s you who’s against me, he mumbles, you’re not giving me a chance, you attack me as if I’m the enemy of humanity, and she presses against him, so why don’t we both make an effort, OK? For Tomer’s sake. He listens to her dubiously, what exactly is she suggesting, sexual intercourse for the sake of the child? Why not for their own sake, since when have adults not been allowed to make an effort? And more than this, he wonders what signals her body is sending him, does she really want him or is this part of the deal, how demeaning for him and really for her too, it’s been months since they did it. When was the last time? Her birthday or his, whichever came later, suddenly he can’t remember, long ago sex had lost its routine presence and turned into a bourgeois ritual, like a bottle of champagne that’s opened on special occasions although no one particularly likes the taste, except that year when she wanted to be pregnant with Yotam, then every morning she was chasing up the mysteries of her ovaries, and the need for precision dictated their sex lives for almost a year, and although they were both practical and not romantic by nature, in the spirit of the entire process a kind of serenity dominated them then. But once she got what she wanted it seems she lost all of it, and although he felt as she did he held this as a grudge against her, and even now her body annoys him, like his own body in fact, and not only on account of its weight but also its weightlessness, and therefore the breasts that are pressing into his back seem to him like envoys without power and without attraction, and he mutters coldly, I’m bushed, good night, and in silence she gathers her limbs together and moves to the other side of the bed and within a few minutes she’s fast asleep, as always, so much for her claim that she isn’t sleeping at night. Her steady breathing has accompanied his insomnia for years, a kind of family curse shared by him, his mother and his sister Dina, almost the only thing that unites them.

There were years when he found in her healthy sleep a blessed balance, and years when he envied and hated her for this, and the further they grow apart, while she is subsumed so far as he’s concerned into some multitude of blurred faces that isn’t him, her sleep no longer affects him, one more person who sleeps easily, it’s only by chance that this miracle happens in his bed specifically, and he leaves the bed with a sigh and goes to the children’s room, does he have the strength to walk out on her, has he not left it too late?

The night-lamp with its Mickey Mouse ears and silly smile lights up the face of Yotam, sleeping with mouth open and knitted brows, whereas Tomer is beyond the range of the faint rays and his face is dark, as if their beds are located far apart in different geographical zones. Was he really expecting a different kind of child, did the boy’s resemblance to Shlomit alienate him from him as their relationship soured, or was it the resemblance to himself? He didn’t take pleasure in him, didn’t take enough pleasure in him, while Shlomit was quick to possess him avariciously, turn him into flesh of her flesh.

With a heavy heart he leaves the bedroom and switches on the light in the kitchen, realising how hungry he is; his big stomach is hollow, besides a tasteless croissant in the courthouse cafeteria he has eaten nothing all day, but he’ll get over it, he’s not going to give the stomach what it’s demanding, he’ll punish it and starve it, subdue it with a firm hand, and he bends down and drinks lukewarm water from the tap, drinking and drinking until the void is filled and then dragging his tired legs to the bedroom. Through a crack in the shutter the beam of the street-lamp filters in and a thin ray of light rests on Shlomit’s neck, emphasising the contrast between her soft white skin and her curly black hair, the texture of pubic hair, and he fumbles distractedly with her neck, his other hand going to his awakening penis; it seems the hunger has migrated from his stomach to his loins, hunger for a chunk of fresh and oily meat, attractive even in its hairy ugliness, as a surge of vibrant lust unfamiliar to him impels him to leap suddenly on her neck and bite it angrily, desperately, like a dog mounting an unknown bitch beside a refuse dump, and before she can let out the howl of pain and protest that will instantly kill the illusion, he puts a hand over her mouth, which smiled the most repellent of smiles at him only a little while ago, crushing her lips with his fingers, and with the other hand he guides his penis, stiffened by resentment, between her thighs, drawing a fierce delight from the disgust that her body arouses in him, and all this time his teeth are locked on her neck as his body rises and falls over her, her hair filling his mouth until he feels close to vomiting, but still he doesn’t give in, his eyes darting around tensely to be sure no other dog is approaching, because the moment he releases the neck the humiliating sensation will dissolve, his last grip on life, and he goes up and down like a hill-climber, running on the steep and narrow path alongside the wadi, with its warm and perfumed exhalations, and he’s gasping and panting, in his mouth the strange and sticky fruit he plucked from one of the trees, the shape of a honeycomb and tasting salty, until he stumbles suddenly and falls into the depths of the wadi, his body crashing on the rocks, and there they attack him at once, shedding his blood, cutting off his head, what a devilish relief, he isn’t the hunter but the prey, and she isn’t the bait but the naked trap, and a renewed wave of hatred towards her washes over him as he pushes her away abruptly and retreats to the side of the bed, breathing heavily.

He never attacked her like this before, and he’s embarrassed between the sheets, although at the same time he relishes the sudden sense of freedom, is this manliness, is this how real men feel, devouring many women, firing their rifles? Did that platoon commander feel this way, after he shot and injured the peace campaigner, is this how they all feel, that nothing will stand in their way from now on and for ever, that the universe lies at their feet? How nice it will be to wake like this in the morning, with a sensation of wondrous intoxication, how nice it will be to fall asleep like this now, but here comes her voice breaking through the darkness, and it’s bland and matter-of-fact, as if her neck hadn’t been gripped by his teeth just a few moments ago, tearing open the webs of sleep and bringing him back to this part of the world: to his country, to his city, to his family, because she says suddenly, as if they were engaged in a casual midday conversation, tell me, have you spoken to your sister lately? And he replies in a whisper, overawed by their voices, overawed because they have a whole language at their disposal, not just grunts and groans, no, I haven’t had occasion to, why?