The Remains of Love (3 page)

Because she has noticed recently that almost every approach to her daughter begins with a memory. Do you remember how we used to play in this garden? We loved staying here after dark, after everyone had left, and there’s Bar’s house, do you remember when you went there for a sleepover but called us in the middle of the night and asked to be taken home and after that she didn’t invite you again? You remember how I used to take you to the crèche and afterwards we’d buy ice cream here? Why does she need so much corroboration on the part of her daughter, what difference does it make if she remembers this detail or another, and it isn’t all these things that she wants to remind her of, but their love. Do you remember that you loved me once, Nitzan?

Where did it suddenly spring from, this moment in which the balance between memories and desires is shattered? No one has prepared her for this, neither books nor newspapers, neither parents nor friends. Is she the only woman on earth who feels this at such an early stage of life, and without any disaster visible to the eye, the first to feel that the pan of the scales laden with memories is overflowing, while the pan of desires is as light as a feather, and focused entirely on restoring something that used to be.

Enough, she says, enough of this already, you hear me, Rabbit? Enough, but the cat isn’t giving up, latching on to her with devotion, pricking up a sinewy tail as if presenting her with an abstract of all the anticipated summer heat. This is unbearable, she says, all at once it has become too hot, just a moment ago it was winter, and now in one day it has turned to summer, without stages, without transitional seasons, what a lost, desperate country, always going from extreme to extreme.

Because the smell of the overnight bonfires is still weighing heavy on the sweltering air, how hard it is to breathe and perhaps there’s no need for it, recently it has seemed to her even the smallest of tasks is too complicated for her, and perhaps it’s her motivation which is no longer strong enough. Once, when Nitzan needed her, she used to breathe frantically, stealing oxygen from the mouths of passers-by, but now that the girl is distanced from her, hurting her deliberately, she has no interest in oxygen, let others breathe it. What an unpleasant age, she sighs, forty-five, once we would have been dead at this age, we would have given up raising children and expired, liberating the world from our presence, the prickly presence of women no longer fertile, husks devoid of charm.

We’re not answering, Rabbit, she informs him when he leaps up on to the marble worktop in the kitchen, for all I care they can carry on calling until tomorrow, I don’t have the strength to talk to anyone, but when he paces with majestic slowness towards the window sill and sniffs with satisfaction the empty space left behind by the dove eggs she understands – someone left the window open in the night despite her clear instructions; this is the one that destroyed the nest, the rabbit, or rather the cat, and when she peers out, to her dismay she sees broken shells on the pavement below, and a repulsive gunge, the remains of life.

Gideon, she yells, I’ve been telling you all week, don’t open the kitchen window, but he went out some time ago, his old Leica hanging round his neck like a child’s lunchbox, and an extra camera slung from his shoulder, wandering about restlessly, eyes darting, relentlessly seeking the unique combinations which define reality for him. Did she really say this? For a moment she hesitates, maybe she only intended to say it, and again the strange pain between the ribs, the anger aroused again. Two little embryos once resided in her nest, two precious stones, and only one of them hatched, her Nitzan, a tiny but healthy baby, while the other didn’t survive, turned into repulsive gunge, and nobody was to blame for this, but all the same she insisted on blaming, especially herself. Was this down to her preference for the girl? Was it their anxiety in the first weeks of pregnancy which drained the young creature of the will to live? How are we going to cope with this, tell me, he used to sigh, he had only just been sacked by the paper, and he was shutting himself away for hours in his improvised darkroom, and emerging from there grim-faced, as if disaster had struck: two parents, two embryos, all at once, what’s going to happen, who’s going to bring them up, who’s going to bring us up? For hours they used to lie on the sofa, staring at the walls of the cramped apartment, what’s going to happen, we need to find a better apartment, need to find work, need to take out a loan. The list of obligations grew longer, intensifying the helplessness. A menacing nihilism emerged from within her in those days, meeting his own in a dark alley, until one day he packed a small bag and left, I need time to recuperate, he muttered at her, as if this was a blow that had landed on him, and she thought he would return that evening or the next day, but a few days later he called her from Africa, and when he finally returned he had in his knapsack some exclusive shots which turned him overnight into a celebrity photographer, while in her hidden nest there was just one egg.

Can thoughts kill, can wishing for failure engender disaster? She wanted to be left alone in those days, with two tiny creatures clinging to the walls of her womb like snails on a tree-trunk, and most of the hatred she directed at him, at the male. Could she have been otherwise, probably not, but neither could he. In the first years she was so busy with the baby she was almost incapable of imagining in herself the existence of another creature, but the more Nitzan grew, the more he haunted her, the child who wasn’t born, the child who gave in too easily, and sometimes at night when she came to tuck Nitzan into bed, it seemed to her she could hear someone else breathing in the room, a sound wafting between the toy shelves, and in the daytime she used to see him cavorting alongside Nitzan as she played – his hair the colour of honey, as rich and abundant as hers, his eyes brown-green like hers – and when she painted, and when she read, and when she wept, but now that Nitzan is moving further away from her he isn’t receding, he always was a sweet child, considerate, silently obeying her repressed wishes.

What are you waiting for, have another child, her mother used to urge her, Nitzan needs a brother or a sister, and you need to back off from her a bit, and she would reply scornfully, really, Mother? The way you backed off from me? You should know, they call that abuse, not backing off. Deep down inside she knew her mother was right, and still she hesitated, she so much enjoyed devoting herself to her daughter and giving her all the things she herself never had, to say nothing of the obstinate refusal of Gideon, and she always believed it wasn’t too late, there was still plenty of time to convince him. Now and then she would try, we have another opportunity for happiness, Gideon, come on let’s do this before it’s too late, but he would recoil at once, how do you know this would be happiness, it could be precisely the opposite. We’re doing all right as we are, why spoil it? Why risk what we have for the sake of something unknown?

What kind of a world do you want to bring another child into? he would chide her, as if she had expressed some exceptional and outrageous request, you have no idea where you’re living, join me on one of my trips and you’ll get to know this land, they’re not all sitting in comfy apartments talking about happiness, there are people for whom a kid just means an extra mouth to be fed, and she wondered why this was relevant: was a child that they brought into the world destined to steal the rations of another child, and again she would back down, afraid of pressurising him, afraid on her own account of change. Weren’t they doing all right like this? Yes, it was good, too good perhaps, bringing up Nitzan without competitors – unlike her experience of growing up driven by jealousy and hatred directed towards her younger brother – and the girl flourished, surrounded by love, why endanger what is for the sake of something unknown? Yes, it sounded convincing, and it almost convinced her, but in her training college which had turned over the years into a university, the students had different ideas, and when she stood up in front of them and lectured on the expulsion of the Jews of Spain they laid sensitive hands on their tumescent bellies, and they didn’t seem to be risking their happiness, on the contrary they were boosting it, and recently she has begun to suspect that they were right, she was the one in the wrong and it was too late to make amends. She of all people, supposed to be teaching them, had not read the book of life correctly, since the Nitzan of today isn’t the sweet and loving girl she once was; the quick-tempered girl who slams the door of her room in her face, the door of her heart as well, is hardly going to console her with her very existence for the children she didn’t bear.

Don’t get worked up about her, they tell her, be glad that she’s daring to kick out at you, that’s exactly the sign that means she’s growing up right, she needs to get away from you but she’ll be back, and in the meantime make the most of the extra free time you’re going to have, you might finally get round to finishing your doctoral thesis. They all have words for her, Gideon, her mother, her friends, all of them offering her words from moving lips, like remedies for an embarrassing disease, but what is she going to do with them? Can she cradle the words in her arms, take the words out for walks when the air cools down a bit, show them the moon and the stars? What a strange pain this is, peeping out between her ribs as if they are the bars of a cage, she’s cultivating it and it is certainly well-nourished, developing nicely; within a short time it has turned from a tiny snail into an oppressive and demanding creature, impeding respiration and arousing waves of nausea, stopping her concentrating on her work, not allowing her to perform the simplest of tasks, even answering the phone, which apparently has been ringing for the past hour. She’s become so used to it that it seems to her to be emerging from inside her own head, through the ears and into reality, the ringing of alarm bells because there is no point to words, this is an era of sound which is starting now, with the remains of her life, it is she who is ringing out to the world, it isn’t the telephone, because when she finally approaches it nothing is heard.

The receiver is cold for some reason and when she lays it on her breast, a torrent of blazing heat rises from within and she clenches her lips – it seems if it escapes from her throat there will be no way back, fields will burn, forests will blacken, houses turn into charcoal, an unbearable heat will sweep the globe, consuming all at once those she loves: Nitzan sleeping over at a friend’s house, her body thin and frail, Gideon on his travels, photographing the relics of the Lag Ba’omer bonfires which burned out before morning. And for that reason she must not release the torrent raging inside her, she has to keep it trapped in her lungs, so it burns only her. She gave them so much, the two of them, over the years, and now it seems this is the last favour they will ever ask of her, and even if this is bound up with the total cessation of breathing she will take it on, prove to them her devotion, by the kitchen window I shall burn like a torch of memory, by the kitchen window I shall weep, and when they return they will find here on the floor a broken shell, repulsive gunge, the remains of life.

Only this morning before he left she tried to delay him by the door, I have a pain, Gideon, and he asked coldly, with a minimal glance in her direction, where does it hurt? In the heart, she said resentfully, aware that this pain was inferior by comparison with pains of the body that merit instant recognition. And he, predictably, snorted with impatience, what’s been the matter with you lately? Get a grip on yourself, be glad that you’re healthy, that we’re doing OK, look around you for a moment and say thank you.

Thank you, she says now, thanks to you for the support, really, but what did she expect? For years he’s been remote, immersed in his own concerns. Was there ever any basis for the belief that now, when she needs him, this will change? Is he the one she really needs? Again that pain in the innermost kernel of her being, crumbling from within like a diseased tooth. I’m sick, she says to the silent telephone receiver, I need help, I’ve lost something and I don’t know if I’ll ever find it.

What will she call this thing, that has bound her to the tumult of life like an embryo attached to the feeding tube, years upon years, although recently it seems that a hard-hearted midwife has cut the cord with sharp scissors, as if to say, Mazaltov, you’re born, but she knows this isn’t birth, it’s extinction, sudden excision of the purpose of life. Her thumbs whiten on the telephone receiver which is making its voice heard again, but she doesn’t reply, putting it to her breast, her lips are clenched and she isn’t breathing, only she knows how dangerous her respiration is. And her brother Avner counts ten rings and cuts the connection and then leaves her a message on her still inactive mobile. Mum’s had a fall and she’s unconscious, he tells her angrily as if it’s her fault. She’s in casualty. Come as soon as you hear this message.

Avner never liked being left alone with his mother. Even now, with her mouth sealed, albeit by an oxygen mask, and her arms lying motionless alongside her body, her eyes closed and consciousness flickering, he’s afraid of her, perhaps she’ll stretch out her wrinkled arms to embrace him, perhaps she’ll try to kiss him with her parched lips, perhaps she’ll embarrass him by bursting into tears, Avni, my boy, I’ve missed you. Almost every visit she greets him with a complaint, where have you been, I’ve missed you. And when he tries to reassure her, I’m here, Mum, she asks anxiously, but when will you come again?

I’m here, be happy that I’m here now, he reminds her again, but she isn’t letting go. I see so little of you, and I miss you. Even when he’s sitting facing her she’s missing him, even when she sees him she perceives only the empty space of his absence. Milksop, mummy’s boy, the children in the kibbutz used to tease him when she lingered at his bedside, reluctant to leave him, or when she came looking for him in the garden, calling his name in her high, somewhat strident voice, Avni! Where are you? His face was flushed with shame when her cry was treated as an alarm signal, danger, time to hide, go to the shelters, and already the children were imitating her before his crimson features. How embarrassing to be loved so much.