Nausea rises in her throat when she examines the pockets of withered skin, imagining her lips licking this skin, groping for the nipple. Even if decades have passed since then these are the same lips, the same nipple, barely covered by the rags of the nightdress with its pattern of grey petals. This is the nightdress from Venice, she recognises it suddenly; she bought it for her at least ten years ago and she’s never worn it before, and the memory of that trip at once brings a surge of acute pain. Did something start there with its consequences extending to this very morning, did she resign herself there to something she perhaps wasn’t supposed to resign herself to?
They left little Nitzan with her mother; this was the first time they travelled without her, and it seems to her now it was there that their lives diverged into different alleyways, since she longed to revive and restore the early times of their love, longed for all those signs of romance that surrounded them in such abundance. Most of the couples around were busy with one another, between the boats and the doves, the canals and bridges, but Gideon was busy with them and not with her, running to and fro in agitation with his camera, aiming it like a whip and pressing the shutter again and again. Maybe I’ll offer the paper a series of loving couples in Venice, what do you think? he asked, and she said, sure, what a wonderful idea, trying to hide the affront, because he noticed every other detail but not the new dress she was wearing at dinner that evening, or the glossy lipstick she bought before the journey.
What do you expect, it’s the way of the world, she tried to console herself, as they sat face to face in the restaurant and he was looking over her shoulder. With Nitzan at her side she found it less irksome, but there without her the days seemed intolerably long, and the obligation to enjoy this place turned for her into torture, and what she really wanted was to go home. The beauty of the city sprawled on her heavy and menacing as she tried, even from this distance, to follow the girl: now she’s waking up, now she’s going to the nursery, now she’s coming back. A deep grief, a feeling that they would never meet again, took hold of her as she walked beside him among the palazzos, and it wasn’t the glories of the sites she saw but the children of the tourists passing by her, trying to endure the sight of a child when her daughter wasn’t there, her ears alert to their voices. It seemed to her they were calling to her incessantly, not by the name her parents gave her in childhood but the name given her by her daughter, Mum, Mum, the children bleated to her in their clear voices, Mum, look how high I can jump. Mum, I’m hungry, tired, bored.
At the end of the day this is a disappointing city, she said to him when they returned to the hotel on the last night, a narcissistic city that exists only in the eye of the beholder, there’s no gulf between the place and its image, no truth waiting to be revealed, just what you see, it seems that if the tourists stopped coming it would sink and disappear. Sounds of laughter rose from the piazza below, and for a moment she felt they were mocking her for her words, you too need to be looked at, you’re sinking too, and he opened another bottle of wine, I’ve got so used to photographing ugliness that I really don’t care, he said, what’s wrong with a little beauty? How well she remembers that night, the tickling of wine pouring down the throat, the dim and scary sense of mirage, even when he took her in a loving embrace, even when he snuggled against her and fell asleep at once, his hand resting on her stomach. Reliefs of winged babies hovered above her in the corners of the room – was he there too, their lost baby, gazing at them with plaster eyes, and she hastily covered their naked bodies with a blanket. It was only the morning after, their last day there, that she relaxed a little, hastily buying a present for her daughter and putting a lot of effort, and nervous energy, into finding a present for her mother, as if there was anything on the face of this earth that could satisfy her, compensate her for this unsavoury sequence called her life, and now as she probes the soft material over the humps of her mother’s bony knees, she wonders why this of all mornings she chose to wear her forgotten present for the first time, to be ripped apart in a panic by the medical team in their efforts to resuscitate her, and left looking like the shirt of a mourner at a funeral.
In her childhood she didn’t often see her mother in her sleepwear, and in her innocence she thought she went to bed in her simple daytime clothes, and one time, when she fled from the children’s house in the middle of the night and her mother opened the door to her, she was astonished to see her swathed in soft and attractive fabric, and for a moment she thought this was sophisticated evening dress and she’d stumbled into a secret party going on behind her back. Even now the feel of the fabric arouses a painful longing in her and she hesitantly extends her other hand and caresses again and again the hem of the nightdress, almost leaning over her mother’s bare knees, and anyone looking on from the sidelines would be convinced it was the raddled skin of her legs that she is caressing with love and devotion, refusing to be separated.
Avner overhears the questions of the specialist doctor, who is casually writing up his notes on the life-story of Hemda Horowitz, almost eighty years of age, a widow plus two, the names of the medications she is receiving and her medical history, and it seems Hemda is herself listening to the data that Dina is passing on with an air of crass and imperious boredom. But it’s really the events of this morning that the doctor is trying to extract, not wanting to leave a single moment unaccounted for; how much time elapsed between the raising of the alarm and the arrival of the ambulance, he asks, needing to establish to what extent the supply of blood to the brain has been compromised, and it’s for this reason that the old lady is hitched up to weird and wonderful machines which tell more about her than she could ever tell about herself. But this specific question the older daughter can’t answer, and the son who knows is keeping silent, hidden behind the curtain. Wasn’t it always like this, he wonders, they inhabit the same space but their personalities are entirely different: Dina the serious, the responsible one, trying to be a useful member of society but incapable of carrying it through, while he’s the one ducking his responsibilities, hiding at a time when only his evasive presence has the potential to relieve anxieties, whether he likes it or not.
Half an hour passed, he wants to say, a precious half-hour, but then her life is full of hours, with their halves and quarters, and the essence of things no one can decipher: how she came to be born to pioneering parents in the middle of the first half of the twentieth century, such a dreamy girl, strange and eccentric, who never managed to adjust to kibbutz life although she was born and raised there, how she married their father, that lonely foreign youth, whose love turned to hatred and his dependence to resentment, and how she succeeded in achieving nothing, living always on the negative side – a wife who didn’t love her husband, a teacher who didn’t like teaching, a mother who didn’t know how to bring up children, a storyteller who couldn’t put anything into writing.
For many years it seemed the kibbutz was to blame for all this, that only when she left would her real life begin, but even when she finally succeeded in extricating her family from there and moving into a small apartment in a housing project on the fringes of Jerusalem, the process itself sapped all her strength and she failed in the attempt to be born again; it was death that awaited them there, not life, since their father couldn’t stand it and within a few years he fell ill and died, and he remembers now the fearful rage that was aroused in him that summer, when the three of them were left in the sweltering apartment, when he realised it was too late.
Because of you I missed out on the chance of knowing him, your aversion to him was forced on me too, how hard it was coming to terms with the knowledge that he would never know his father, not ever, but did he know her, had the decades that she lived on after his father’s death helped to deepen their acquaintance, and does he have any interest in this now, when his sister is energetically pushing the wheeled bed towards the examination rooms? Furtively he rises from his bed, like a patient who has enjoyed a miraculous recovery behind the curtain, wit
hout medical intervention, and follows her progress from a distance, keeping a safe space between them. If she sees him he’ll pretend he was looking for her, and if not he’ll be spared the need to conduct a tedious conversation, while at the same time proving his dedication, being there and ready to jump in if the need should arise, like a male predator keeping a close eye on his family from a distance while going in search of prey, and in the meantime he’ll scour the ward for other families, or not so much families as couples, one couple in particular to be precise, for whom he’s searching so earnestly he almost loses sight of his sister, chasing after every sparkly fabric that he sees; in fact it isn’t the woman in the red top that he’s longing to see but the man at her side. He wants to hear his voice, find some excuse to conduct a conversation with him; in places like this brief and unexpected relationships are forged.
As he advances towards the main exit he realises that if he had indeed been discharged, it would be beyond the strength of the man to make it to the car park, and thus he would be forced to wait for his wife, sitting by the exit, and that is where the thread should be picked up. It seems to him for a moment that he’s spotted his swaddled form on one of the benches, but when he quickens his pace towards him, he has no choice but to pass close by his unconscious mother and his sister, who is leaning on the side rail of the bed and looking at him in bemusement. Hey, Avni, she waves at him, where have you been? I thought you’d gone without waiting for me. He says, what a thing to say, I’ve been here all the time, I just went down to get a drink. His eyes are straining to see what’s going on in the lobby, and she says, wait here a moment, I need the toilet, and at once she disappears as if she can’t bear his company. So he’s trapped, wondering whether to abandon his mother for a moment and hurry to the door; what can happen, at the most they’ll miss their slot. But all the same he doesn’t dare leave the open-mouthed old woman unsupervised and he makes his mind up and takes a firm grip on the bed, pushing it in front of him and using it to clear himself a path, almost at a run, like an orderly taking a patient for emergency surgery, to the hospital lobby, and all of this to prove how right he had been, or how mistaken, not hurrying there at the outset but instead stretching out on the vacated casualty bed alongside his mother, because there’s no doubt the man was sitting here and waiting, but now all that is left for him is to watch as he is led carefully towards the gold Citroën driven by his partner, an incurable case turning his back on all the doctors and medications, all the questions, hopes, inquiries and demands, gathered in to a place where the last words are said, a dance without movement, a song without sound. With bitterness in his heart he stares at the back of the receding car, then goes out into the sweltering air as if retracing the last footsteps of the invalid on his arduous journey, and already he’s hurrying distractedly across the car park, rummaging in his pocket for his keys, when he remembers to his horror that he’s left his unconscious mother in the lobby, and he runs heavily up the incandescent ramp, arriving out of breath at the place he left just a moment ago, to be meticulously checked out by the concierge as if he’s a newcomer.
No one has touched the bed, he’s relieved to see, as if the bed with his mother in it has become one of the regular fixtures of the hospital, planted in the floor like those benches in the sitting area, but from the end of the corridor his sister is running towards him, and on her face is the expression he’s so accustomed to seeing on the face of his wife, a blend of disgust, rejection and anger, and she pants at him, are you insane? Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you all over the hospital, I thought something had happened. And he too is still panting, confronting this paragon of forthright self-righteous femininity, and he looks down and mumbles, I met a friend here and I went outside with him for a bit, why are you making such an issue out of it, and they’re standing facing each other on either side of the bed, with the body that brought them together back then binding them now whether they like it or not, but also erecting a partition in its typical fashion – when his downcast gaze meets the upward gaze of his mother, a surprisingly clear look, excited, almost ecstatic.
Daddy? her toothless gums mumble at him, and he looks around him in embarrassment, as if it wasn’t to him that the syllables were addressed, as if expecting to see there the legendary father whom he never knew, rising from the dead and hurrying to take his elderly daughter in his arms, but she fastens her eyes on him and repeats, Daddy? – extending to him the apologetic smile of a child trying to evade punishment, her hand reaching out for his and he recoils, Mum, it’s me, Avner, and Dina’s here too, he adds, urging his sister to back him up, to help him draw their mother with a chain of words into their world, but his mother ignores his words and beams at him in wonderment and joy, nothing can destroy her happiness, the undiluted happiness that he sometimes identifies on the face of his youngest son, the absolute embodiment of all delights, her fingers avidly caressing his arm, I’ve missed you, she whispers, it’s been so long, I was afraid you weren’t coming back.
Over the rail of the bed he sees his sister breathing heavily, her dark eyes moist, and she clutches her mother’s other hand, this is Avner, he isn’t your father, she says in her authoritative tone, as if standing in front of a class, we’re in the hospital, you had another fall, do you remember? But the old woman rejects her words angrily. Leave me alone, I didn’t ask you, she says, let me be alone with him, and she shakes off her daughter’s hand and holds his arm with a vigour which reminds him for a moment of the healthy-bodied woman she once was.
We need to take her back to casualty, and talk to the doctor, he whispers, it seems there may be some damage to the brain after all, and they move along the bustling corridors, a middle-aged mother and father and their geriatric baby, who suddenly bursts into tears, with a plangent wail like a siren, rising and falling, her crumpled face awash with tears. He never saw her like this, and really it’s no wonder, after all he didn’t know her as a child, and listlessly he goes on dragging the bed with its squeaking wheels. Mum, relax, he mumbles, everything’s going to be all right, you’ll soon be feeling better, unconsciously repeating the dubious promise that he heard through the curtain just a little while ago, and he looks for a little encouragement in Dina’s face. Just a moment ago she was there, pushing the bed along from behind, her curls shading her brow, her long fingers, like the talons of a bird of prey, caressing the bed rail, and suddenly there’s no sign of her.
With pounding heart Dina hurries to her car, eyes smarting. It’s wrong to feel offended by children or by the elderly, she knows that, but these are specifically the ones she feels offended by, by her daughter and by her mother, who totally negated her existence, holding on to the arm of her brother while pushing her away brusquely. If it were possible to attribute this to old age or to the fall, that would certainly be some mitigation, but old age or the fall has only given prominence to what she has always known, what her mother has tried to hide from her until this morning, when it was no longer possible to pretend; her feelings like her exposed breasts, revealed in all their shameful ugliness.
Ferocious heat enfolds her limbs when she leaves the air-conditioned corridors, and she sighs, these heatwaves of early summer, from year to year they become harder to endure. It seems to her that her flesh is scorched, and sizzling audibly, and she looks in alarm at her exposed arms, surely this is inconceivable, it’s just the intense heat of the hamsin season, it will pass soon enough, any woman of her age recognises this. I’m going out now, my darlings, I’ll be home soon, she hears the young woman beside her trying to reassure her impatient children. Another half-hour if there are no hold-ups, she sends the promise via her mobile, and Dina glances at her with envy, how she misses that sensation, knowing someone is waiting for her at home. Enjoy it, she wants to whisper to the woman who is going to the car in front of hers, enjoy it even if gets tiresome sometimes, it won’t last for ever, and she takes her own mobile out of the briefcase, she needs to talk to Nitzan, to hear her voice, it feels li
ke weeks since they met.
I’ll be home soon, dear, she whispers into the phone, but the girl doesn’t answer, and yet it seems to her, to Dina, that it’s her she’s returning to, getting into her car and driving impatiently, as she used to when Nitzan was small, hurrying home when classes were over, the knowledge that her daughter was waiting for her coiled around her like a rope, a noose to which she gladly proffered her neck. Sometimes she used to run along their street, really run, a little shamefaced, how much meaning there was in every step. Mum! You’re home! The little girl would leap up to greet her, taking her by the hand and insisting on showing her the marvellous things she had been doing, little treasures of happiness she would find among the wooden bricks, among the furry animals and the tattered books, and even when Nitzan was a little older, turning into a serious and grown-up girl, she would run to meet her from her room, telling her stories, showing her pictures and exercise-books. How nice it was coming home, even if she was tired after a long day’s work, even if what awaited her was another white night of work to be checked and marks to be awarded. How she longs for such pleasure, and suddenly it seems to her it’s still in her hands, she can again be that woman who is awaited with love. Nitzan must already be at home, perhaps she’ll open the door to her and fall into her arms, and she will feel how a candle that was extinguished in her has been relit, and she will gladly cook a light meal for the two of them and they will sit together in the kitchen. You see, I don’t need much to make me happy, she explains aloud, just talking with the girl in the kitchen, feeling I’m needed by her, not loved necessarily, just needed.
The Remains of Love Page 5
