The Remains of Love (30 page)

I don’t think so, she says, studying his face and shaking her head almost apologetically, and he says hurriedly, of course not, I meant to say that I remember I saw the two of you there, in the hospital, I was sitting next to you, you cried and I gave you a paper tissue I had in my pocket, it’s like in your lecture, this radiation you talked about, I remember that feeling, and then a faint look of relief rises to her face and she says, that’s right, you were there with your mother, how is she?

How is my mother? he asks with a touch of rancour, still alive, he blurts out, if you can call it living, not the best decision on the part of the creator of the world – Rafael Allon dead and Hemda Horowitz still alive, but he hurriedly turns the conversation back to them, to expand and deepen that moment they shared, the single memory they have in common. You wore a red blouse, he tells her, you promised him he’d feel better soon and he believed you, he was calm and the two of you looked almost happy. I didn’t understand it, I had never seen anything like it in all my life, and being unable to explain precisely what these words mean he falls silent, and she’s silent too, staring at him with a rather bemused expression and then walking on slowly until she pauses beside her gold Citroën, identical to the one he’s been trying to locate for ages, and he’s baffled. Just a moment, is this car yours or his? – betraying in his haste the information he has gathered so far, and she replies with surprising candour, it’s mine, we bought two identical cars, a silly thing to do perhaps, but we had to find oblique ways of feeling close to each other.

This was one possibility that had never occurred to him, and he wonders now where her car is usually parked and how close he came to locating it, and he tries to remember the list of addresses he obtained, the crumpled list that he carried around in his pocket day after day, but he has to pull himself together because she’s already at the door of her car, and it seems she has no particular interest in continuing the conversation, even if she did accept a used paper hanky from him one morning. With closed lips she smiles a farewell at him, she has nothing to say to him and anyway it seems she’s not a great lover of words; even on the stage they filtered from her mouth reluctantly, but he can’t give up now and hastily he lays his strange request before her, would you be prepared to tell me about him?

About Rafael? she asks, but why? And he says, it’s important for me to know him, I don’t really understand it myself, perhaps if we could sit down somewhere you could tell me about him, and she stares at him in bemusement, as the yellow lamp lighting up the car park paints her skin the colour of sand. All right then, she concedes, do you want to come in? – offering him her car as if it’s her home, and he approaches from the passenger side and opens the gold door; once more his car is going to be left stranded in alien territory, and once more he will have to retrieve it and invent some excuse, just so long as she doesn’t slip away from him, the woman he’s been seeking thirty days and nights, and not knowing why.

She drives in silence and he wonders about her, wonders about himself, stubbornly and impetuously he has been seeking her out, and now they are belted up and enclosed in one confined space, their inhalation and exhalation mingling together, and for this short time their destiny is shared, if she swerves suddenly out of her lane he risks injury too, although she knows nothing about him, and from her point of view it makes no difference if he goes on existing or stops, and the gulf between them is so huge it seems there’s no way of bridging it, but isn’t the gulf characteristic of the clash of presumption and indifference, he muses, after all the newborn baby is unaware of the scale of the expectations and the worries bound up in his entry into the world. Lacking opinion and information he goes forth, blind to his needs, and she is the same, driving in silence, she doesn’t know yet how intently he’s waited for her, nor how much she needs him and his condolences, and therefore it’s incumbent on him to be as silent as she is. He’s so used to verbose women, like his wife and his sister and most of the female lawyers he has come across, the words fired from their mouths with no effort required, and even when they are sweet they are hard and painful like the confectionary thrown at the bar-mitzvah boy, and it seems that sitting here beside him is a new and rare strain that he’s examining with curiosity, taking care to look straight ahead to avoid embarrassing her, but giving her furtive sidelong glances, trying to follow her movements and glean as much information as possible.

Her hands holding the wheel are narrow and their skin slightly wrinkled, under her chin too he sees the beginnings of a dewlap, the signs of ageing are more perceptible in her than he remembers, or perhaps it’s only this last month that her age has caught up with her. In the palaces of his memory she transcended time, made of marble and porcelain, and now her skin is set out before him in all its vulnerability, enfolding thin arms on the verge of decay, a long neck with delicate grooves scored in it like the footprints of birds. It seems that the moment she was deprived of the love of Rafael Allon she was exposed to the onset of time, but he is going to take her under his wing and protect her from it the way he protects his powerless clients, and for a moment he wants to tell her all about them and especially about himself, to boast, gather together all his past achievements and present them to her as a gift, the innocents whose rights he fought for, children whose education he fought for, women whose divorces he succeeded in preventing, the house demolitions he blocked, all the petitions, the judgments, the debates and the claims, all down the years.

Furtively he goes back to scrutinising her profile as she moves her hair back behind the lobe of her ear, in which a tiny earring sparkles like a distant star, her high forehead, lips bright with lipstick and the eye, its colour obscured from him by the dense lashes, twitching nervously, as he rehearses his accumulated data again and again as if he’s still searching for her, his secret love, an unacknowledged widow with no rights, a mistress. Now she peers at him briefly, smiles a faint smile and presses a button, sighing as the vibrant sounds fill the void of the car, a low and melancholic male voice, a solo French horn, more and more wind instruments joining in and yet still it seems every note is lonely.

This is what Rafael loved hearing most of all in the last weeks, she says, as if remembering she’s been asked to talk about him, do you know it? It’s Mahler’s Kindertoten Lieder, he didn’t understand German but when I offered to translate it for him he refused point-blank, and Avner hesitates, wondering whether he should ask her to translate for him, or would this be a breach of trust, a subversion of the memory of the deceased, but before he has made up his mind, with an abruptness that seems to surprise her too, after all what is the point of driving for a long spell in silence and turning on the music a moment before the journey ends, she parks in a space reserved for the residents of an old stone building; he has no idea where he is, as if his eyes have been blinkered all the way, as if she was all that he saw.

When he steps out of the car and looks around him, scouring the dark and narrow street, he realises to his surprise how close he is to his home, and for a moment it seems to him everything is the exact opposite of what he has assumed; in fact she’s the one who knows all about him, down to the last detail, and now she’s driven him to his home and in a moment she’ll be parting from him with a wave and continuing on her way, but she’s already locking the door and signalling to him to follow her, along a side path skirting the main entrance, framed by a sparse bamboo hedge, and he wonders about her decision to invite him into her house rather than one of the cafés in the neighbourhood, a decision fated to answer straightaway certain questions that have obsessed him in recent weeks: does she have a husband, does she have children, apparently not, and the lack of balance between her and the dead man distresses him when he enters the dark ground-floor apartment, in an alleyway running at a tangent to the busy main road, and when he remembers the sumptuous house where the deceased used to live in the quiet garden suburb he feels for the little woman in the little apartment and all kind of impractical vows reverberate in him, and even when the light comes on to reveal the heartening sight of colourful curtains descending to the gilded floor and a cream-coloured sofa strewn with cushions, he’s still feeling sad: who is all this for?

It’s nice here, he remarks, and she says, thanks, it isn’t quite finished yet, I only just moved in after the renovations were done, this was my parents’ house, and he remembers the commotion of the construction work in this side alley in recent months, when he used to pass this way with Yotam in the pram, cursing because access was blocked by heavy machinery. And it was all for her benefit, as it’s turned out, and apparently for his benefit too, as he has the pleasure of relaxing on the sofa and looking around him, at the tiles with the motif of blue diamond shapes like little fish, at the dining corner with the wicker canopy shading it, at the stormy landscape paintings, strong in colour and in expression, and as he’s answering her questions, wine or coffee, water or lemonade, he notices a photograph on one of the bookshelves and gets up from his seat to take a closer look; it seems it was that very day it was shot. Arm in arm they are standing, leaning against the car, is that the hospital in the background? She’s wearing the red blouse that he remembers so well, and he’s in the grey cotton shirt, masking his fearful emaciation, there’s no doubt they were photographed that morning, and he reckons if he strains his eyes he’ll see himself peering at them from the hospital entrance, and he asks in astonishment, who took this photo? And it seems she’s equally astonished by his question, saying as she pulls a cork from a wine bottle, we asked someone who happened to be passing, and he’s almost offended at not being asked himself, how happy he would have been to immortalise them, immortalising them has been his sole obsession these last few weeks.

Did you know? he asks cautiously, did you know there wouldn’t be another opportunity? And she says, yes, of course, as if talking of some fact easily digested, and he wants to ask, so why did you make that promise, why did you promise him, but then he sees another picture on the shelf, smaller and faded, of a girl and a boy arm in arm and leaning on the trunk of a tree. The boy he identifies at once because his smile hasn’t changed, that’s also the way he smiled the last day of his life, and it seems to him, to Avner, he recognises this look, a kind of pensive melancholia and overriding it, the smile that erases it almost entirely, but the girl beside him with the long black hair is harder to identify, since the indignant expression on her face is quite unlike her adult appearance, and he wonders aloud, is this you? although he knows the answer, and she nods, almost apologetically, have I changed that much?

Yes and no, he says, your face hasn’t changed much but your expression has, and he holds the framed photo and moves it close to his eyes, smoothing it with his finger although there isn’t a single grain of dust on it, gliding over the impressive porcelain cheeks, the outlined lips and the black, supercilious eyes, and he puts the other picture beside it; impossible not to try spotting the differences between them, some of them obvious and some of them concealed from the eye, a kind of game of superiority and inferiority which becomes clear to him at once, since in the youthful picture she’s holding his hand in hers in a kind of supplication, and in the later picture it seems the supplication is hers but it isn’t directed at him, and he slumps exhausted on the sofa, the pictures in his hand, as if he himself is compelled to bear for their sake the burden of the decades that elapsed between one picture and the other, the weight of lost opportunities, and in the meantime the table is filling up with cups and plates, a dish of purple grapes and bright cherries, a dish of nuts and almonds and a jug of iced water, but he can’t let the pictures alone, like evidence presented in court they are set out before him, telling a closed and gloomy story until it seems there’s no need to add anything. Is that why she isn’t talking, working away in the kitchen in silence, taking a tray of cheeses out of the fridge, slicing bread, as if it was all set up in readiness for his arrival, and not only for him but for other guests too, calling in at the end of the thirty-day interval. Where are they, then? Why don’t they come? And he’s waiting for her to suspend her activities and sit down facing him in the flowery armchair, and then he will address to her the only question that can possibly be asked with those two couples looking on from the pictures: how did this happen, I mean, why? How did you miss your chance if you were together in your youth? Why didn’t you marry and have children and set up a family? How has it come about that you’re alone here in this doll’s house while he’s living with another woman, or rather dying with another woman, and yet in spite of that I saw you there, the last day of his life.

When she finally sits down facing him in the armchair and pulls off her high-heeled shoes he notices to his surprise that her toenails are painted black; he’s never seen such a colour on the feet of a grown woman, is that how she expresses her mourning, and he wishes he could sit at her feet and wipe the black dye from her toes with his tongue, and in fact he doesn’t want any more conversations, hearing or being heard, since there are only a few words that he wants her to whisper in his ear, words known from the outset, tomorrow you’ll feel better; in fact these are the only words that don’t provoke him, that don’t cause him almost unbearable pain, like the words she is about to say as she pours wine for both of them and raises her glass to him with a gloomy smile and drinks thirstily, her skin reddening as if it’s the liquor colouring it from inside, and on her forehead beads of sweat are gleaming as she holds out her hand to him and takes the photographs back, studying them earnestly as if she hasn’t seen them in a long time. This was his idea, she grins, indulging the tragic caprice, having our picture taken in exactly the same pose, he had all kinds of private jokes like that, she explains for his benefit, as if striving to comply with the wishes of the strange guest, and Avner hears himself asking, why didn’t you stay together?