The Remains of Love (27 page)

She’s gone off the rails, his wife declares with satisfaction, you wouldn’t believe it, I called in this morning to visit your mother and found Dina in her bed, snuggled up against her like a baby, it seems I woke her up because she was totally confused, and she looked frightful, she adds, getting down to the detail, she was always jealous of his sister who, she claimed, looked down on her, you must talk to her, and he asks testily, now? At two in the morning?

Of course not, she grins, it really isn’t that urgent, I just wanted to tell you before I forgot, and he mutters, great, so you told me, and he’s cursing her inwardly, wondering why she saw fit to open her mouth and drive away the sleep that’s finally cooperating with him. This is just what he needs now, his sister’s woes, and anyway who knows what’s going on with her, they live so close to each other but hardly ever meet, each of them dubious about the other, defending his or her choices, each of them disappointed by the other. He refuses absolutely to think about her now, about his stuck-up sister, with her annoying didactic rhetoric, her cold and aloof husband and the daughter who’s too skinny and too smart, an irritating family, he sighs, and already his anger is veering towards his sister, since it seems to him it was she who sprang upon him suddenly from his wife’s throat, to rob him of his sleep tonight.

Chapter Eight

In the morning the rays of sunlight creep in with the cruel cunning reserved for this room which was once her room, and it seems that thirty years haven’t elapsed and she’s still a young girl with all her life ahead of her, time enough to destroy her meagre fortune. How she hated the mornings in this room and the invasion of the rays that pierce her eyes, knives of light slicing her sleep thinly, until she’s forced to wake up to transparent reality, dazzled and flustered. What’s the time? she sits up in alarm, I’ll be late for school, why didn’t you wake me? It seems any moment now she’ll find her father standing at the little mirror in the shower room and shaving off the bristles of the day that’s passed, and her mother in the kitchen, washing the dishes from the day that’s passed, but she’s in no hurry to leave the bed, her limbs are tangled up in knots that she can’t untie, her neck trapped between her shoulders and nausea rising in her throat, and when she tries to move her head on the axis of her paralysed neck she notices the body beside her, the old woman lying motionless on her back like a mummy, her skin covered with a kind of dark wax and her mouth open, and she too gapes beside her in bewilderment, how did you get here and how long have you been here, a girl scared in the night and creeping into her parents’ bed, but your father’s been dead a long time and your mother’s old and you yourself are on the cusp of the age of decay.

You sat on the balcony and drank what was left of the wine from the meal, the bottle that was fuller than you expected was steadily emptied, you waited for Gideon and perhaps you slept on the balcony, but how did you drive here, and how long ago was that, and how is it that no one’s looking for you, as if you never had a family, you’re even more isolated than your mother, and when she turns to look at her again she’s shocked, there’s no sign of exhalation from her mouth and nothing going in, no movement reverberating in her body. She’s dead, I smothered her without knowing it, like an inexperienced mother with a day-old child, perhaps I killed her on purpose, I pressed the pillow down over her face, avenging myself on her, on Gideon, on Nitzan, on Avner, and she made it easy for me and didn’t even struggle. After all, if I don’t even remember driving here, who knows what else I did and I don’t remember. She feels her heart wandering between her ribs, soon it will burst and fall silent and thus the two of them will be found at the end of the day in one bed without a living breath between them, a mother and daughter who never shared a single moment of grace, and she tries to stabilise her breathing, putting a tremulous finger to her mother’s arm. You’re alive, please be alive, she implores, amazed at how hard it is for an inexperienced person like her to distinguish between death and life, because suddenly she hears a faint rustle exhaled by her mother’s nostrils, and when she presses against her the old woman opens her wrinkled eyelids and mumbles, what’s this, what was all that?

Go back to sleep, everything’s all right, she whispers, gratefully laying her head in the hollow of her shoulder. Her mother’s bones are so brittle, they are liable to crack under the weight of the heavy skull deposited on her, but she wants to keep it there for ever, the fear of loss cancelling out all partitions, and she embraces the old wax doll in her arms, the shell that has been emptied and can therefore be filled with any content, according to changing needs, which lately have become brazen and embarrassing. In a moment she’ll fasten her lips to the nipple and try to suck from there the taste of life that she has lost, let me drink your grey milk, Mother, give me life, until she forces herself to abandon this and escape from the bed, with the musty smell rising from it, put her feet on the floor and walk away, with aching bones and heavy nausea, away from here, this room is no longer her room and the bed is no longer her bed, midday already and she has no idea what’s happening at home. When did Gideon return and where did he go, is Nitzan at home, is the cat’s bowl full or empty, and she washes her face in front of the small mirror in the bathroom, only her forehead and her eyes and the bridge of her narrow nose are visible, a reminder of the days when her mother was taller than her, a reminder of the differences in dimensions and status within the family as reflected in the positioning of the mirror; ultimately it wasn’t satisfactory for any of them, and yet it didn’t occur to them to acquire a larger mirror which could accommodate the faces of all four of them.

Oval coronas surround her eyes and her hair is dry and unruly, and when she stretches her body, her sunken cheeks are revealed and she passes her tongue over her lips, and the tiny wrinkles dancing around them, and anyway this mirror was always tough on faces, as if prophesying the future and anticipating its arrival, and now she lingers before it, washing her face again and again in cold water, as if this is the way to smooth her skin. In years she hasn’t scrutinised her face with such painful thoroughness, look at yourself, are you really going to push a pram down the street? With this crease between your eyes, and the fatigue behind them? This isn’t for you, this is for your students with their radiant skin and fresh faces, even when they’re tired; as for you, even when you’re not tired the lights in your eyes have gone out, and she dips her head in the basin under the tap, wetting her hair, brushing her teeth with a finger, be content with what you have and say thank you, Gideon was right, what presumption, what madness. Will a young child make you younger? The opposite, he’ll just emphasise your age, will he make you calmer? The opposite, he’ll just intensify your fears, and it isn’t fair for the kid either, getting middle-aged parents who may not have time to bring him up at all, not to mention the difficulties you can expect if a child is damaged or scarred, will you be ready for that too? Have you any idea just how much effort is needed?

Her hair is dripping water on her shoulders and she puts her hands on the sides of the basin, fighting another wave of nausea, and when a sour whitish liquid leaps from her throat she bends over the toilet bowl, her finger thrust into her gaping throat, just as it was then, some thirty years ago, when her girlish face was reflected back to her in the stark marble sides of the pedestal, with the thin trickle between them, and all kinds of weird and wonderful foods made their way from her throat to the throat of the bowl, from her tormented gut to the gut of the toilet.

In those days there was no name for such phenomena and they were never discussed, and as a result it never occurred to her that she had secret allies, somewhere in the world there was at least one other girl going down on her knees before the toilet bowl after almost every meal, especially if she overdid the eating, and any slight deviation from the norm was excess in her eyes, not to mention the wild and unruly diets designed from the outset to lead to this result: fresh bread with chocolate spread, ice cream and halva and cake, all the foods not even to be contemplated by a girl with expanding thighs and bulging stomach, decadent meals that could only be snatched when there was no one else in the house, with pounding heart, and a tense look from the window at the entrance to the neighbouring house, to be sure she wouldn’t be disturbed, and immediately after this the bending of the already aching knees, and the finger down the throat, and the slimy cataract gushing from her mouth in a violent stream, leaving behind it a sour taste in the void of the mouth and on the tips of the fingers, and she’d stick her head under the tap, scrubbing her hands with soap and her lips as well, putting a little soap into the mouth, sprinkling herself with her father’s pungent shaving lotion, as her mother didn’t possess so much as a single phial of perfume in those days. But sometimes it simply didn’t work, sometimes the gloop stuck to the stomach and refused to climb up the oesophagus, and then the finger would roam around the mouth, damaging the delicate uvula, and nothing came up but bloody saliva, and in the meantime some member of the family would have returned home and would be pestering her, come out of there, Dina, you can’t monopolise the bathroom for hours on end, there are other people here, but not one of the people living alongside her in the tiny apartment asked himself or herself, or her, no one gave any thought to what she was actually doing in there, no one knew how deeply trapped she was in the disorder she had developed, how loudly the toilet was calling to her all the hours of the day and the night, no one realised this was the only time she was happy, when the gunge poured from her mouth, leaving the stomach empty and the body purified.

Hey, come out of there, Dina, they would go on urging her until she stood up with difficulty, stumbling to her bed with painful throat and bloated stomach; a sadistic disco dance in progress in her gut, ice cream cavorting with halva, bread with chocolate, and all of them maliciously joyful. She writhed on the bed, wishing there were some newly invented but simple operation, akin to abortion, a scraping out of the stomach with a long spoon shaped like a ladle, even without anaesthesia, just so long as it got rid of everything in there, until she turned into a creature unencumbered by a physical body. She had to try again later, when they were all asleep, she’d drink a lot of water and sneak into the bathroom, to the toilet bowl that was waiting for her with open mouth, how hard it was to find privacy in a crowded apartment house with hollow plaster walls and one shared toilet, and yet no one ever noticed her distress.

What were they so busy with, she wonders now, washing her hands over and over again with the cheap soap; Nitzan must be home by now, and she is hypersensitive to smells, but what was it that preoccupied her father and her mother and stopped them noticing her, each of them huddled in a corner and licking wounds while she was harming herself every day, and suddenly the pain returns to her in full force, this burning in her throat, so demeaning, what a trap for her was this miserable little room, with the peeling walls and mould on the ceiling, what a trap for her was this dreadful apartment, and now she’s getting out of here, she’ll cross the threshold and go, many years have passed, soon the carer will be arriving for her mother and she’s going home, after all she has a home of her own, a family of her own.

Reverberations of raucous canned laughter are audible on the stairway of her house as she climbs up with an effort, floor after floor, you could be driven mad by this artificial laughter emerging from the neighbours’ houses, the kind of laughter that actually makes her want to cry, to bemoan the increasing stupidity of the world, and she tries to insert the key in the keyhole but without success, apparently it’s locked from inside. She rings the bell but nobody hears, and indeed how could she be heard. To her surprise she realises that the repellent gusts of mirth are coming from her own house, how can this be, it’s so unlike Nitzan, and she takes her mobile from her briefcase and calls her, but the phone won’t be heard either and she slumps down exhausted on the stairs, leaning against the door of her apartment, her fingers and hair stinking of puke and cheap soap, her clothes drenched in sweat. Open the door to me, Nitzan, she whispers, open up my dear girl, my sweetheart, my dove, my treasure, and miraculously it seems her whispers have been heard because the door opens suddenly and she tries to steady herself so she won’t fall flat on her back with the abrupt removal of her support.

Nitzi, I was giving up hope, she says with forced jollity, luckily you heard me in the end, come on, give me a hand, she goes on babbling as if some miracle has happened, and already she’s rising a little unsteadily, because the hand that her daughter extends to her is attached to a weightless body, not to be leaned on for more than a split-second; this hand is cold and lifeless, or perhaps loveless, and when she finally stands facing her daughter she sees her hostile expression, which ages her so much that she dares for a moment to guess how she will look in her dotage, and she tries to draw closer with a clumsy movement that doesn’t work out well, how are things, my dear, has anything happened?

No, she retorts angrily, avoiding her touch and throwing herself down on the sofa, then pressing the remote to turn up the volume and Dina sits down beside her and caresses her bare thigh, what’s up, Nitzi? Talk to me, turn the TV off, but the girl immediately moves her downy legs out of reach, stubbornly holding on to the remote.

Don’t you feel well? Have you fallen out with a friend? Has someone hurt you? she presses her, thinking immediately of that boy who possibly left a strand of hair behind, as well as a lot of doubts in her heart, has he dumped her, and the primeval fear of rejection comes back to haunt her and she falls silent, but her daughter shakes her head and at once goes on the offensive, you, you’re the one who’s hurt me, and you have no idea how much!