The Remains of Love (31 page)

What business is that of yours, really? she asks, but there’s no hostility in her voice, only puzzlement, and he tries to answer lightly, I myself don’t understand this, but ever since I saw you there together I’ve been thinking of the two of you, your radiation goes with me, and to his relief she’s satisfied with this, I left him, she says, her diction constricted and controlled as in the lecture she gave just a few hours before, we met at the university, we were together several years, Rafael wanted to marry me but I wasn’t ready for it yet, the future he offered seemed too bourgeois to me then, and already she’s refilling her glass with the dark and prickly wine, crossing her legs. I left him for some musician, she reports briefly, as if delivering some judgment which is almost superfluous, since the two of them have already learned that actions exist even without the words that accompany them, I lived for some years in New York, and when I came back to this country he was already with Elisheva and with two children, and everything was lost, for me at least, she concludes, and Avner finds himself listening to her with dropped jaw, why lost? he protests as if all this could still be changed, people dismantle families, people correct their mistakes, or make new mistakes, it happens all the time, although not to me, he hastily makes the exception, it happens to other people, and she agrees with him, yes, it happens all the time to other people, and already she’s filling her glass yet again, and he wants to put his hand on her wrist to soothe the tense movement, but contents himself with a grape that he plucks from the bunch, sucking it in the void of his mouth. He never managed to do that, she says, when I left him he had a serious crisis and Elisheva helped him through it, he didn’t dare leave her and he was afraid of hurting the children and afraid of putting his trust in me, and so the years passed.

And all this time you were together? he asks, and she replies, not all the time, and whenever we met we tried yet again to separate, excessive guilt on his part and excessive anger on mine, and it was only this last year after his children left home, our relationship seemed to have a future, he helped me renovate this apartment, we planned to live here together, he finally decided to tell Elisheva and leave home, but just then he fell ill.

And did Elisheva know? he asks and she says, there are all kinds of knowledge, it isn’t unequivocal, and besides that we worked together, we had joint research projects, and just when he decided to tell her and leave her the disease was diagnosed, she repeats, and there was no point hurting her unnecessarily. I put so much pressure on him, she sighs, who knows if that caused his illness, I wanted him to myself and I ended up with a dead partner, perhaps if I’d been prepared to go on sharing him he’d still be alive, when you want too much you lose too much.

Don’t blame yourself, he tries to reassure her, eager to be of service, this particular illness doesn’t need any specific cause, who do we know who isn’t ill? he asks as if they have many friends in common and she says, it’s hard not to lay blame, although he himself wanted this very much, he wanted to live with me here, and she points weakly around the cherished little room, he was really into home improvements, she stresses again, it was symbolic for us because this was where we fell in love, I was living here with my parents when we met, we thought we would succeed in recreating the universe, what a foolish idea, she says, and for the first time he detects a hint of bitterness in her voice, and when she reaches again for the wine bottle he offers his glass, as if volunteering to drink on her behalf, but she isn’t content with his glass and she fills hers too, with an alacrity he’s not used to among his acquaintances, taking hasty gulps; the wine colours her teeth purple until her mouth looks as empty as his mother’s mouth, and he flinches slightly, looking down. You see, her story is laid out before you, served up to you like the grapes and the cherries, is this what you wanted? Will the information satisfy you, or will you try now to dismantle the story into chapters, into its inflamed components? You wanted to know but where will you take this knowledge, what will you do with it now, when you have it in your hands?

So here’s another life story, there are more bitter ones, another love story and there are sadder ones, what’s he to you, what’s she to you, how do their lives connect with yours? He’s surprised that she herself isn’t seeking further clarification, entrusting her life story to him without probing his motives. Is it because she’s so steeped in her sorrow, she’s stopped noticing him, or is this the way she normally conducts herself in the world, inert and wrapped up in herself, and apparently he can go now, this is the story and it isn’t going to change, it’s impossible to lodge an appeal or an objection, the verdict has been handed down, the case is closed, and a kind of emptiness spreads through him, a heavy emptiness indeed, a prodigious weight. You’ve got what you wanted, so what will you do now? Why not get up and go home, respond to the tetchy text message from Shlomit that’s just come through, where the hell are you? Home is only a few streets from here, and you’ll see this woman from time to time in the main street or in the grocery store and exchange pleasantries, wishing each other a good week and a peaceful Sabbath, have a happy New Year and enjoy the festival, what else can people say to one another, and as he’s sitting back on the soft sofa that wasn’t meant for him, it seems to him he has nothing to say to his wife either besides have a good week and a peaceful Sabbath, have a happy New Year and enjoy the festival, likewise to his children, his mother and sister and all his acquaintances, to be on the safe side just add, may you know no more suffering, and that really is everything. And he sprawls exhausted on the sofa, he doesn’t want to go and doesn’t want to stay; to be taken from here is what he wants, gathered by a mysterious and concentrated force with a stronger will than his, as Rafael Allon was taken from here, since suddenly it’s clear to him that they came here that morning in the gold car, she brought him here from the hospital after she was told his hours were numbered.

There are people who prefer to die at home, the casualty nurse had whispered back then, as if letting him into a secret, but this man definitely preferred to die in this place where he planned to live out the rest of his life, and he lays his head on one of the cushions, the wine that he isn’t used to drinking so copiously fuddles his consciousness and it seems to him he too has given up the struggle, his train of death is speeding too and he is inside it, from the place he was born to the place he will die, from the moribund lake bordering on the sea of death, via the ruins of Beit She’an and Jericho buried in the desert, to the city where since time immemorial members of his race have aspired to be buried. How well he came to know this long route, there were years when he recognised every thistle and every flower on the way, every station, but this time the train isn’t stopping at stations, being meant only for him. Now and then they wave to him along the way, the single traveller changing from baby to child, to youth and adult, growing up from junction to junction, is he really travelling or are they moving away, after all time and space need to join together to create movement, like a man and a woman, whereas with him space is detached from time when he reaches the valley under the hills reddening in the east, between the bathing sites of the secret Jordan and the promises that were given here and will never be fulfilled; sparkling are the golden towers and silver turrets of Jerusalem, and he passes by the tents that are so familiar to him; stay with us, his ghostly clients will plead along with their wives and children, after all they’re used to their pleas going unanswered, stay with us his children will plead, and he sits up all at once, his hands twitching and he looks around him in bemusement, his gaze meeting her eyes, which are red like the eyes of a rabbit, the wine glass in her hand and she’s drinking in silence.

Sorry, I seem to have fallen asleep, he mumbles, I’m not used to drinking. How strange, in his own bed he has whole nights of insomnia, whereas here on a stranger’s sofa he nods off in spite of himself. Perhaps he should ask her to lease him this sofa and he’ll come here to sleep from time to time, they are neighbours after all, even if she doesn’t know it, clearly she doesn’t know and isn’t interested in knowing, and suddenly he wonders about this almost with indignation: is it so obvious to her that strangers will be interested in her depressing story, she needn’t bother to respond with so much as a hint of reciprocity, and he pours himself a glass of water, forgive my bad manners, he says, I’ve fallen asleep on your sofa and I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Avner Horowitz.

I know, she says, raising her glass to him and drinking his health, and he’s taken aback, really? How do you know? And she says, I saw you once on TV or in a newspaper, it took me some time to remember, you’re the lawyer of the Bedouin, and for some reason she chuckles, and he nods his head, surprised and flattered. This unexpected recognition induces him to speculate: maybe the neighbour identified him, and the widow too, while he was pretending he was from the faculty of sciences. How absurd he is, he could yet be arrested for impersonation, but that isn’t the main point; giving himself his identity back, he feels like a man walking the streets naked and eventually clothes are found for him and he puts them on, or perhaps it’s the opposite, he’s like someone wearing clothes that aren’t his and getting stripped stark naked, one way or the other he’s lost the freedom of anonymity but gained some recognition which inspires him with confidence. He’s no longer a foundling picking up scraps of information, but a lawyer of renown who fights for the weak, even if his achievements have been fewer in recent years, and from this standpoint he looks at the woman facing him, her extinguished eyes and purple teeth and her head swaying a little, and he stands up and holds out both hands to her, come on, Talia, he says, you need to sleep.

To his surprise she obeys at once, holding his arm and rising to her feet, and he guides her before him to the adjacent room with its closed door, as if escorting a little girl who has been walking in her sleep, and meanwhile he’s thinking she herself has never had a child to escort like this and now she’s left it too late, and indeed when he lays her down on the broad bed, delicately unfastening the buttons of her blouse and pulling off her trousers, the body that is revealed to him in stages is slim and smooth and shows no signs of a pregnancy, her stomach is flat as if a living creature has never resided in its inner recesses and her breasts are small and solid as if they have never filled with milk, and she lets him undress her, obediently holding out an arm or lifting a thigh, arching her back, and while peeling off her clothes he wonders about her and about him, thinking that if her consciousness were to clear and she saw him leaning over her like this she would raise such pandemonium he would definitely be taken out of here an arrested felon, exploiting the grief and intoxication of a stranger to spy on her body, the last of the peepers, but it isn’t vision that’s the crucial thing so much as smell, since he finds himself kneeling on the carpet at the foot of the bed and sniffing her body, not the lower abdomen which is still encased in lacy white underwear, but the neck and arms and legs and feet, until she lets out a sigh and opens her eyes and he straightens up at once and spreads a blanket over her, a fatherly gesture. Sleep, Talia, he whispers, I’ll bring you a glass of water, but when he returns she’s already fast asleep, and he puts the glass down on the cabinet and leaves the room, his body in a whirl and her smell in his nostrils, the smell of bitter grapes, the smell of grief and disappointment, the smell of a man’s woman without her man, after thirty days is there anything left of his smell, the smell of his love, of his sickness and death? Although his heart is beating tensely and his head is heavy and swaying he doesn’t go yet but meticulously returns the tray of cheeses to the fridge, also the grapes and cherries, peering in meanwhile to see what else she has there, what she’s eating, but the fridge is empty, the entire contents she put out on the table; there’s not even any milk in there – more like a squat than a residence.

Moving quietly he transfers the dishes to the sink and can’t resist sniffing them, then leaving them on the draining board, examining with fascination the new wooden cabinets and the still sparkling kitchen utensils, and while standing at the sink he notices another door opposite the bedroom and hurries over there, finding himself in a study evidently designed for both of them, as two chairs stand before the gigantic desk overlooking the garden, and there are two computers and an abundance of books on the shelves, and of all the rooms this is the one where the monkish scholar feels most like a trespasser and he hurries out on tiptoe to the front door, it’s time to go, he tells himself, your time is up, but it’s then he sees the keys in the keyhole, and he stands by the door wondering how he can leave when the hostess is in no fit state to lock up after him.

He really should go home, his wife has already left him another urgent text message, but how can he leave her here like this in her bed, in a deep sleep and exposed in an open house, where anyone could get in through the garden, which has only a thin bamboo hedge protecting it, and from there to the unlocked apartment and from there to the bed, and he agonises over what to do; he could lock the door from the outside and then at least she’d be safe, but how’s she going to get out unless she has a spare set of keys, and the windows are barred and netted – two contradictory options and both unacceptable, one involving too much freedom and the other the denial of freedom.

Of course he’d be happy to stay here and doze on her sofa, but he’s afraid of her waking up and being scared, or misinterpreting his presence, and he goes out into the garden as it seems this is the only realistic option he has, to defend her from outside as if he’s the watchdog of this house, like Casanova of the enigmatic smile, and that was also the way he sniffed at her, eager and desperate, satisfied with little, and he looks for a place to lie down, the garden isn’t completed yet and there isn’t even a deckchair to sprawl in, nor a bench nor a hammock, but his fatigue is so deep that he collapses in the porch and rests his head on the coarse doormat, bearing the word WELCOME in big green letters, and this reminds him to text a message to his wife, don’t worry, I’ll be home in the morning. All the arrivals are welcome, the people leaving are welcome too. Even more abject than his low-lifers who sleep in tents, without a blanket or a roof over his head, a dog without a kennel, and yet in spite of all this his mind is at ease, and when he drifts into sleep it seems to him that beyond the bamboo hedge he can hear the footsteps of Shlomit taking Yotam to the nursery; where’s Daddy, he hears the clear and ringing voice, where’s my Daddy?