Love Conquers All

by Galia Albin

  Chapter 12

  They met only infrequently. At times he disappeared for a week or two on business trips, and then her friend Ditty, the inveterate skeptic, asked her if her love affair was taking place in real life or in a fantasy world. “Maybe he has someone else?” she teased her, refusing to understand Talia’s composure. She, herself, she asserted, would have searched high and low to find out what was going on.

  “Leave it alone, Ditty. Wherever he goes, he’s always going to come back. Besides, as my mother's quote in German, a relationship between a couple is like a glass: it breaks if you hold it too tight or too loosely.”

  “But that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Ditty turned every conversation into an argument, especially when the topic turned to matters of the heart. “You are holding the glass too loosely. Soon you’ll lose him. But I have high expectations of you. Can’t you nail him down a little, stop him from going abroad so often? At least, let him ask you to join him on one of those trips.”

  Talia said nothing. She remembered what Jonathan had told her on their first date, that they were destined for each other, that no matter how long it took, eventually they would be together forever; “forever,” that was the word he’d used again and again. In any other context it would have sounded anachronistic to her, highfalutin’, melodramatic, ludicrous, but when he uttered it, she believed him. It sounded sincere and pure, like everything else he said to her. Her heart told her he believed their relationship to be something sacred. She also knew Ditty would laugh at her if she used the word “sacred.” She’d say, “Jonathan Schwarz and ‘sacred!’ Talia, you’re so naive, grow up!”

  As the relationship evolved, Talia called on him from time to time with requests for additional funds for her volunteer activities — money to pay guest lecturers, for audio equipment. Never anything for herself. She knew he would accede to all her requests, and he did.

  Gradually, from one date to the next, the distance between them seemed to shorten. She could not quite figure out what it was that attracted him to her and piqued his curiosity, but she stopped wondering and instead basked in the warmth and kindness he lavished on her, and in his insatiable desire to know everything about her. Almost imperceptibly, he drew out of her everything she knew about herself. She told him of her childhood, her parents, her first marriage. The interest he showed in Na’ama pleased and excited her. When the three of them met, he played with the girl as though he, too, were a child, and it was obvious that he was eager to become a father, himself.

  Shortly after Jonathan met Na’ama, Talia asked Amir to take their daughter to live in his house in Ramat Hasharon for a time. Since their divorce, she had considered him a full partner in her upbringing, and indeed Amir had fulfilled these expectations and proven an excellent father. Now that Talia had met a man she truly cared for, she felt she owed it to herself and her beloved to start their life together under the most promising of circumstances. There would be just the two of them and the space between them.

  Na’ama was happy at the house of her father and stepmother, who lavished her with warmth and love. Still, once in a while, Talia was beset with guilt. These feelings quickly dispelled, however, after talking with Jonathan. He had become a confidant, a confessor, a therapist. When fielding his questions, she learned more about herself, even acknowledging and coming to grips with her shortcomings. She aspired to be the idealized, “perfect mother,” but if this entailed becoming a victimized mother, one that always put her children’s needs before her own, she knew she wouldn’t be able to accomplish it.

  They still saw each other only infrequently, rationing their dates, as if afraid to be swept away by the force that drew them together. From date to date, she felt her love growing stronger. She was thirty-three years old now, but never before now had she experienced such elation, such rejoicing; from the moment she awoke in the morning until her eyes closed at night, she felt she was walking on clouds. She was enveloped by love all hours of the day, even when she sat glumly in her office at school. When she and Jonathan met, however, they did not speak of love.

  Two months after their initial meeting, he saw her home to her apartment. Her throat almost choked with excitement, and she stole a look at him. His face was pale and his hand shook when she offered him a glass of cognac from a bottle she’d kept in the kitchen just for him. They shed their clothes in silence, as though they were accustomed to it. Then, overcoming the last hurdle, he pulled her to him. “Your smell, Talia, what a wonderful smell you have,” he said, inhaling deeply. Then swiftly, gently, he was inside her, and she gave herself up to him with abandon.

  She couldn’t understand why her body was wracked with violent sobs. Jonathan laughed, excited and grateful. They fell asleep together, their bodies entwined. They woke a couple of times, surprised to find themselves in the same room. Only at dawn did they finally maneuver and relax their bodies into the spooning position, which henceforth became their habitual sleeping posture.

  Sunbeams penetrated the slats of the blinds. “It’s nine o’clock already,” he whispered in her ear, and flooded her with small kisses, kisses that fluttered like soft butterfly wings on her earlobes, lips, eyes and cheeks. “A thousand kisses for my love, as it says in the song,” he whispered, covering her entire body with his mouth, lapping spot after spot with unimaginable tenderness. And she responded to his lovemaking with a delight and passion she’d never imagined existed.

  The phone rang late in the afternoon. She was lying on the couch in the living room, thinking about the previous night and morning’s activities, waiting for Jonathan.

  “Talia,” Amir’s voice sounded angrier than she’d ever heard it. “I’ll never forgive you for what you did this morning. It was the first day of first grade. Na’ama was the only girl who came to school without her mommy.” Talia packed her belongings and moved to Jonathan’s little apartment on Kind David Boulevard. Her whole life revolved around him now. In the afternoon, she sat waiting for him, feeling pleasantly exhausted. When she heard his steps on the stair, her heartbeat accelerated. He tapped out the little rhythm he’d invented, ra-ta-ta-ta-tat, ra-ta-ta-ta-tat, and she, flush-cheeked, opened the door. Storming in, he embraced her and whirled her around like a top, “Talinka, Talinka, what a day I’ve had! How I missed you!”

  The nights were voyages of discovery, yielding infinite pleasures, which Jonathan explored ardently and thoroughly. He delighted in her and filled her with equal delight. “Hang on a sec, I haven’t been here yet,” he’d say, and burrow into a hidden crevice of which she, herself, was unaware.

  He loved to touch her, even when they were not in bed. His hands were drawn to her as though magnetically.

  Never had she been so happy, so completely, perfectly happy. Even the deliberate snubbing by his friends did nothing to undermine her happiness. Jonathan never said anything to upset or dampen her spirits. As usual, it was Ditty who took it upon herself to update Talia on the rumors about town, not sparing her a single, malicious detail.

  Most of Talia’s acquaintances questioned the friendship of the two women. Talia had a serious, industrious disposition, while her friend, despite being a popular psychology professor at the university, was rather shallow and frivolous. But Ditty loved Talia with all her heart, and Talia loved her, foibles or no. Ditty was like family, and you don’t abandon family; they’d attended the same school from first grade on, served in the army together, lived together in Tel Aviv, gotten married to men who were themselves good friends and, later, both divorced.

  Ditty collected the rumors and laid them at Talia’s doorstep, like a cat proud of its prey. “Everybody’s got a different story about ‘that divorcee with the child who’s ensnared Jonathan.’ They say you went after him for his money,” she blurted out excitedly, savoring her place in the sensational, social circuit, which up to now she’d only read about in gossip columns. If Ditty had been honest with herself and examined her true motives, she might have admitted she was more than a little jealous
of her friend, particularly as her own married boyfriend had returned to his wife and family. But Ditty the psychology teacher was not one to look inside herself.

  “Don’t take it to heart, they’re jealous of you, all those friends of his,” Ditty continued, scanning Talia’s face and watching every tiny gesture. But Talia kept quiet. Ditty was afraid she’d gone too far; she was not mean by nature. “You don’t see that they’re envious of you? Well, believe me. I checked it out. Jonathan’s abandoned all his friends since the two of you got together, and for this there’s no pardon. You see, before he met you, they all used to hang out together all the time; Jonathan invited them, treated them, gave showed them a good time. None of his high school or army buddies had a car when Jonathan was driving around in his big, white American heap. Do you know how may fancy restaurants he’s invited them to over the years? At his expense? And who got them jobs? And who paid their debts? So why should they love you, considering that since you entered the picture, they hardly ever see him?”

  Talia didn’t bother with Jonathan’s friends, anyway, most whom she knew only superficially, and none of whom she particularly liked, especially that fat bear of man, Manu. But even when she considered Dina, Jonathan’s housekeeper, she had to admit she met coldness, if not outright hostility. Dina was a tall, bony woman, with a mop of dyed, bright, red hair and lines of bitterness around her mouth. She deliberately ignored the clothes that Talia left in the hamper, refusing to wash and iron them, despite Jonathan’s explicit instructions. In the morning, when she encountered Talia around the house, her expression invariably soured; it was obvious she was reluctant to relinquish control of the domestic territory. Then there was Jonathan’s secretary, Ora, who always took Talia’s messages with deliberated curtness, never even asking, “How are you?” Could she also be jealous? Does she hater her? Talia liked people to like her, but in the loveless atmosphere she found herself, she felt that she was wilting and losing her way. She was beset by misgivings and disquiet. And yet she did not share those feelings with Jonathan, as she did not want his friends to gain a foothold in their lives. She reassured herself that as long as she was certain of his love, the people around him could think what they liked.