The Remains of Love (41 page)

By the light of the full moon that shines on him through the windows her face is dark, ageing, and for a moment he sees her at his mother’s age, with slender wrinkles pointing to those that will deepen still further, when he won’t be there, when no one will be at her side. An expression of concentration on her face, as if a bitter thought has been oppressing her and she’s been turning it over and over until she fell asleep, and with a shaking hand he pulls down the neckline of the white nightdress. Rest, beautiful bride, he remembers the inscription on the tombstone in the place where he used to stand and wait for her, rest easy on your bed, he mumbles, staring breathlessly at the pale nipples, the flat, decisive stomach. She’s barely stirring in her sleep, raising a leg slightly and exposing a boyish thigh, you too will not be exploited, he whispers to the thigh, but for the moment it’s tempting and forbidden, and he takes a deep breath, it seems to him that steam vapours are erupting from his throat, any moment now the whole room will go up in flames, ignited by the heat of his breath. Trembling and sweaty and calm nevertheless, like someone in whose heart the decision has been taken to take his life in his hands, he bends down and presses his lips to the milky skin of the thigh, he know she won’t wake up, he knows even if she does wake up she’ll pretend to be asleep, she’ll let him complete the ritual of valediction, this is a ceremony after all, the sacrilegious version, idolatry included. On her ankle a stain of crusted mud remains and he gathers it with his tongue, tasting the taste of death, these clods of earth are waiting for him and for her, for his mother and his sister, his wife and his children, a deep and strange taste but familiar enough to him, as if everything he ever put in his mouth had been seasoned with this taste, and he goes down on his knees at the foot of the bed, linking his hands together. Give me life, he mumbles, not with you but without you, give me another chance before I’m buried in the dust, you’re a woman who never gave life to anyone, give me back my life, give me an answer, and this entreaty he brands on her skin with white-hot words, on the skin of the ankle, the inner thigh, her pubic hair and belly and nipples, on her neck and her shoulders and her arms, all her parts arouse him in equal measure, those concealed and those revealed, and he inscribes his plea on them, give me life as if I were a bulb of cyclamen, give me what was stolen from you, swaying on his knees in prayer this way and that, his lips moving and his voice unheard. Down his body a cascade is tumbling, springing from the top of his head, shaking his chest and turning his stomach over, rattling his loins and springing out into the world bitter and painful as the bloodletting of the importunate soul, and he groans at her feet, see, her lips are parted in a wayward smile and her hand stretched out to his face as if his gift has been accepted, and he straightens up slowly and with cautious movements, like a father holding his newborn son for the first time, he dresses her in the pyjamas, lifting her body and pulling her arms and swathing her in yellow stars, her body lost in the voluminous folds of fabric and her face pale against its dark ground.

The breeze of a first autumn night filters through the open window, cooling his limbs, and he looks up at the full moon, transmitting to him an intimidating and familiar smile of leave-taking, exposing long teeth. Is this not the smile of the dead Rafael Allon, and he rises from his place hurriedly, his knees painful after the prolonged kneeling, clutching at the wall and shaking convulsively, and before he has time to regret it and fling himself down on the sofa with its sheets and pillow, he goes out and closes the door, which locks itself behind him with a newly installed mortice, and then the gate which closes with a brassy metallic click, and again he finds himself in the alley leading to the main street, leading in turn to his house, where his wife and sons are sleeping, and he strolls towards them like a dreamer, something that hasn’t been logically computed he wants to say to them, to share with them the revelation revealed to him this night concerning what remains of his love.

Chapter Eleven

Forget your dream, it isn’t going to happen, only when you come to terms with that can you decide if adoption is right for you. Forget the dream of a sweet baby snuggling in your lap, forget what you experienced with your own daughter. You want warmth and softness, you’re missing the sweetness of the early years, but the odds are stacked against all of that. You’re not going to get a baby but a damaged kid who’s already been through a lot, who’s liable to reject any kind of warmth, liable to bite and kick you rather than hug you. I’m not saying this to frighten you but to prepare you. I wasn’t sufficiently prepared and I had a terribly hard time.

Really, what happened? Dina asks in a weak voice. She was expecting encouragement, not scare stories, she’s heard plenty of those, from all sides, but this woman sitting facing her in the café in the city centre has practical experience of it and that’s why she needs to listen to her. In the blogs she calls herself Thumbelina, but to Dina’s surprise she’s met by a tall and heavily built woman, with a blunt and candid style of speech, flaxen hair and a somewhat florid complexion. I’d had ten years of fertility treatment, she says, my son was twelve years old and I so much wanted another child, I couldn’t accept the idea that it was over, I’d never again have a baby of my own. Ten years of treatment before I threw in the towel. My husband wanted another child too, but not by adoption, too much of a shot in the dark. What battles I had with him, it took me a long time to persuade him to adopt. The whole process was horrendously long, until they finally offered us the little girl, and then were the journeys, the tests, the legal technicalities, you need such strong nerves for all of this, but the hardest part begins the moment you’re done with the bureaucracy, when all the external elements move out of your life and you’re left alone with the girl; overnight, by the decision of some foreign court, you’ve become her mother.

And what happened then? Dina asks, again this pain between her ribs, making it hard for her to concentrate on the details of the answer. I got a two-year-old girl, underweight, bald, pale, and frightened, in the children’s home she’d been treated like some kind of doll, or a pet, and I was worried, I reckoned she was too apathetic, but the moment we took her out of there she changed completely. She became hyperactive, running around and creating havoc all the time, when I tried to cuddle her she ran away. My husband, who had reservations about it from the start, never got tired of saying I told you so, and something about her just wasn’t right. In the night she used to wake up with nightmares and it was impossible to calm her down, whenever I came near her she would scream and kick. I felt I was part of her nightmare and our lives were turning into a nightmare too, and the worst thing about it was, there were no gradations. Not like a child born to you that you bond with at a leisurely pace, and all difficulties arise against a backdrop of familiarity and love. What you have here is total alienation, and with the best will in the world, the girl is a stranger and there isn’t yet enough trust and confidence to cope with this sensibly, and of course this is entirely mutual, she has no trust and confidence in us. You need masses of patience, these kids are like prisoners released from captivity, and you shouldn’t overburden them with love. Love can be oppressive too, and you shouldn’t overburden them with expectations either. They need to be treated with delicacy and restraint, and given time to adjust.

How long did it take? Thumbelina repeats the question previously asked, covering her arms with a broad woollen shawl, it’s turning cold suddenly, she says, the winter is early this year. How long? It hasn’t really finished yet, you know, this is a confrontation with no end to it. But the first year was the hardest. It’s a tough age anyway, and she was inquisitive, everything was new to her. She ran around the house and pressed every button she could lay her hands on, the computer, the television, radio and dishwasher. She threw food on the floor, slammed doors, and all the time I was having to tell her to stop. She was testing the boundaries from the moment she woke up. It was so different from what I imagined it would be. Instead of kissing and hugging and reading stories and building things with toy bricks, I was having to chase her round the house telling her not to do things, not that she really heard my voice anyway. Suddenly you understand these concepts, testing boundaries, emotional blockage. You’ll find that a child with blocked emotions isn’t the child who’s going to respond positively to the love you have for him, on the contrary, he isn’t used to love, it threatens him. It took months before our little girl settled down, before she even consented to sit on my lap and listen to a story, and these are just the little problems. From the start I was sure something about her wasn’t right, the genetic mystery was driving me crazy. She used to beat her head against the frame of the bed, harm herself and damage her toys, she bit us all the time. My son used to say, I’d rather have a dog, why didn’t you get a dog instead? He really wanted a little sister, but not one like this. And all the time the conflict with my husband, who couldn’t resign himself to having no more children of his own. After a year he moved out. These days he’s very attached to the girl, but in the meantime he’s married again and so he has new children too. Where does your husband stand in all of this?

My husband isn’t really on board yet, Dina admits bitterly, but I hope I’ll be able to persuade him in the end, and she says, yes, it’s harder for men than it is for us. It damages their ego, it’s the obsolescence of their personal seed, and with them bonding is usually slower too. They’ll compete with a child, and take offence because they’re not enough for us, but don’t kid yourself, this isn’t the biggest problem. It’s reasonable to expect him to agree in the end, somehow, the question is, how are you going to cope with this assignment, seeing that the responsibility will be yours, and all the hard work will be on your shoulders, and Dina nods dejectedly, looking out at the street, crammed with bulldozers and workmen. What a shame it is, they’re tarting up the centre of the city, she really liked the old shabbiness. Even when the terrorist attacks were at their height, she dared to wander round here now and again, peering into the second-hand bookshops, in search of reality, memories, here she used to sit with Orly, drinking frothy coffee and marking exam papers. One day Emmanuel came by, apparently by accident, and she immediately got up and left them to it. The siren of an ambulance alarms her for a moment, but there’s only one, thank God; one is a personal disaster, more than one is a national disaster, meaning it could be hers too. There is so much negotiation to be done with disaster: if you take Nitzan I’ll take my own life, that’s the advantage of an only child, just don’t take me from her as long as she needs me. Now she needs me less, and so the fear has diminished too, and perhaps it’s better like this, but if I wasn’t prospecting for more of this bonding, at almost any price, I wouldn’t be here now.

And how is she now? How old is she? she asks, she’s feeling the cold too but she forgot to bring a sweater, and anyway no garment will ward off the cold wind that’s blowing inside her, and Thumbelina replies, she’s already eight, a charming girl but still not easy to get on with. Proudly she holds out her mobile, decorated with the picture of a fair-haired girl wearing thick glasses, only yesterday when I told her to go to bed she yelled at me and said her real mother was better than me and she’d let her do anything.

Really? Dina asks, disappointed, and how do you respond to that? And she says, I try not to be hurt, although that isn’t easy, I explain to her that it’s natural for her to feel this way, but I’m the one who’s raising her and she has to do as I say. Lately she’s been obsessed with her biological mother, asking a lot of questions, how could she leave her this way, desertion is a deep wound, a wound that lasts for life.

But she loves you? Dina persists, a little abashed at exposing the shady motivation, the demeaning need for love, and the woman facing her smiles broadly, of course she loves me, and we have wonderful times together and I love her dearly, but it’s important to me that you understand it’s not like having an ordinary child, it’s much harder and more complicated. You have a daughter of your own, just don’t expect an adopted child to be the same, I don’t want to scare you, just warn you.

Thanks, Dina mumbles, wondering what she will do with all this information, feeling as if her guts are being skewered, and she sips the coffee that’s rapidly going cold. At a table nearby a young couple is sitting down with a baby, immediately taken from his pram and dandled in the arms of his beaming mother, how young they are, barely more than children themselves. Well, this isn’t coming back, not this age and not the gentle, decisive fusion, and she needs clarity to determine whether she has the strength to face all these difficulties, and how will she know? How will she know if this is the right reply to her aspirations? It’s obvious that bringing up a child is fraught with problems, obviously it’s wrong to set conditions, but she yearns for that wondrous combination, that whole and empowering love. It isn’t coming back, and it will be different, if it happens at all. Persuading Gideon is expected to be the easy part of the assignment, and that too is liable to fail. For weeks they haven’t spoken about this, and he probably assumes she’s dropped it, and he’s making an effort to approach her with sensitivity, as if she were a post-operative patient with stitching still fresh, coming home earlier, occasionally sharing his professional issues with her. Years ago they used to bow their heads over the developing trays, waiting to see his photographs emerge, and now they sit together in front of the computer in the evening, but the supposed similarity is uncomfortable for her, proving to her how much has been lost, and maybe it was never really there, but in the past she had been armed with hope, with a future, with a young daughter, whereas now what’s left between them is so paltry.