Your tea’s going cold, she says, drink it, I put in a slice of lemon from the garden, and he says, your life is going cold, and she turns to him with a suspicious look, sitting in the armchair facing him, very erect, and he imagines her body, solid and impervious as the body of a doll, tiny breasts without nipples, genitals without aperture, what are you trying to say? And he avoids her glance, how will he offer himself to her? Don’t be offended, Talia, obviously it’s none of my business but I care about you and I was glad to see you coming back to life.
You’re making too many flawed assumptions, she says, I’ve nowhere to come back to because I’ve never been a part of this life that you’re talking about, and I never wanted to be a part of it, I didn’t want a family, I wanted Rafael, that was all, she continues in a monotonous voice and she remembers how she stood alone on the stage, dominated by his smiling portrait, people confuse love with family, children with lust, and that has never suited me, not when I was young and definitely not now. Her mobile, on the table between them, emits a brief squawk and she reads the incoming text avidly, I hate what’s happening to women here, this enforced servitude that they accept so willingly, she says, her eyes still fixed on the screen and for a moment it seems to him she’s quoting from it, apparently they’re liberated from their husbands but they’re still in thrall to their children, they stop being women and turn into mothers, I didn’t want that. Only yesterday I realised how much I had gained from him not leaving home, I got the best of him, we had a sacred kind of love, not a secular one.
But do you really not regret not having children? he asks, for some reason protesting on behalf of his own children, as suddenly he misses them and wishes they were here beside him now, and she replies, I always knew I’d have no children, I don’t like mixing things. What does that mean, mixing things? he asks and she explains, when I was a little girl I loved painting but I hated mixing colours, I loved the beauty of the primary colours, most kids mix them all together and end up with incoherent splodges of paint, and he listens to her and remembers his sister. You know, my sister, he starts and at once breaks off, he really doesn’t want to bring up the saga of his sister, deciding suddenly that without a new child her life is no life, he looks at her and wonders about them, about women, putting her on one side and his sister on the other and his wife in between them. It seems to him nothing links them other than their reservations towards him, deep and fundamental reservations, with various and even contradictory motivations, is this what unites the whole of womankind on this earth? Even his intern has recently launched a campaign of crude hostility towards him, but who knows, maybe it’s all about an aversion that radiates from him, as it seems to be expanding to the point where he can’t look at her, and he turns his attention to the meshed window with its view of the inner side of the fence, shadows quivering between the interlaced branches. Is it because she doesn’t need him that he’s suddenly recoiling from her?
A big yawn crumples her face and she apologises, I didn’t get any sleep last night, Elisheva stayed until the morning, I’m so tired, and he says hurriedly, I’m going, Talia, don’t worry, I don’t want to put pressure on you, believe me, from the first moment I saw you I wanted to help you, and now that seems unnecessary, in fact I’m more in need of help than you are, can you imagine it, just now a woman in the street, a stranger, was helping me to walk, and she smiles at him with sealed lips; only the delicate twitch in the skin of her cheek tells him she’s smiling. How fragile is this skin, he thinks, when she grows old it will crack rather than wrinkle.
I’m grateful to you, she says seriously, help is a complicated business, you must see that in your line of work, I wish you could help me, I wish I could help you, and she bends over her foot and peels a thin layer of mud from her ankle, as if unwrapping a bar of chocolate, but perhaps after all I can help you with some advice, she hesitates, you must go home, and he listens to her with pain, the void of his body already foretelling emptiness, how do you know? You have no idea what my life is like with my wife, and she says quietly, true, but if it’s carried on until now it can’t have been that terrible.
What has it really been like up to now, he wonders, it seems to him he’s done nothing in his life, never married a wife or brought children into the world, knocking again and again on a locked door, his gift not accepted, again and again and at the same time never, never has he allowed himself to become so committed, his skin scratched by the thorns of missed opportunity, the void of his body already feeling the emptiness that will dominate him when he’s forced to uproot her from his life, and he stares at her, her hands absently massaging her ankle, the black varnish has gone from the toenails and they are pale, almost invisible.
What do you want, Talia? What’s to become of you? he asks, and she says quietly, I’ve planted cyclamens in the garden, holding out her hands by way of proof although the mud has just been washed from them, and I’m waiting to see them flower in the winter, I love cyclamens, I love my work, I’ve just received a grant for new research, my parents lived small lives here and now it’s my turn, and he thinks about his family, with us it was always big stuff but only in the imagination, that’s the most fatal combination, big dreams and meagre achievements. In our family we create myths, he wants to tell her: his mother’s dying lake, the consummate kibbutz society of her parents, his father’s lost Europe, he himself is the champion of the downtrodden, and now his sister has devised an ambitious and desperate myth of her own, reckons she can save a child and thereby save herself, what do we know about growing cyclamens? What do we know about small lives? But he so much wants to be there with her in the winter, when the cyclamens will bloom in their soft pink colours, to sit with her in the garden while his sons play with a ball on the burgeoning lawn, and when the cold sets in they’ll go inside and he’ll make the hot chocolate, and this will be simple and glorious, an event so tiny in the annals of humanity, but sensational for him because it will happen before her eyes. Before her eyes he will embrace his children, before her eyes they will pass their tongues over their chocolate-sweetened lips, and perhaps this thing is so sensational precisely because it won’t happen, it will never come about, he knows and she knows, even the children dozing on their beds know, and his wife who burns with anger like an eternal flame and has no consolation, and therefore he must uproot himself from this doll’s house in which even the most modest of dreams aren’t going to materialise, but before doing this he needs to touch her. This isn’t lust but a deep and ancient yearning which stretches from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, a yearning born before him that will outlive him, like the yearning of the universe for that primeval radiation which in the beginning accompanied its creation.
Now she stands up and walks to the bedroom, and he watches her movements tensely, will she signal to him to follow her? She returns with an armful of white bedlinen and a pillow, you can sleep here tonight, she says quietly, you can’t go walking the streets in that state, and he stands up heavily and watches her smoothing out the sheet like a chambermaid, plumping the pillow, and all of this for him, and yet she won’t be sorry if he says to her now, thanks all the same, Talia, I’ll sleep at home, that is what he’s supposed to say, that is what he’s supposed to do, and yet the words emerging from his mouth are quite different. Thanks, he says, I don’t feel up to driving, I’m staying at my mother’s place in the suburbs, he adds unnecessarily, while taking off his shoes and putting them on again immediately, worried about the sweaty smell, but she doesn’t seem to notice, handing him a pair of blue pyjamas, decorated with yellow stars. When you look at the sky you always see what used to be there, the stars of the past, light-years separate us.
Rafael liked pyjamas, she smiles, he said with pyjamas he could sleep much better, like a little boy, and Avner grins, really? Did he have a teddy-bear too? and he holds on with interest to the fabric which smells of soap, as if recently laundered. I wear these sometimes in my sleep, she admits, I wake up with them in the mornin
g and don’t remember putting them on at all, and for some reason he lets go of the attractive garments, maybe he wants you to wear these, he suggests, no thanks, I’ll manage without them, I always sleep naked, he adds, wondering about the dry intimacy that’s unfolding here, could we have been lovers twenty years ago, twenty years in the future, since now the time isn’t right, the night isn’t right.
Good night, she says, from close up her face looks thin and tired, the shadows under her eyes doubling their size and he whispers, good night, Talia, acute misery pricking his flesh at the thought of not seeing her again, he knows this for a fact when the bedroom door closes behind her; he will see her just once more, when the little reading lamp beside her bed is turned off and the footsteps in the alley fade away, and the rustling of insects in the garden grows louder, and the soughing of the lawn as it tightens its grip on the ground, and the whisper of the cyclamens budding between the onion beds, and he’ll stretch out on the sofa fully clothed, his body aching and his loins aching, he’ll put the pyjama top over his face and sigh heavily. Hot words split like chestnuts in the incandescent void of his mouth, his desire mounting and no outlet for it, how deceptive is her proximity, a few paces separate them tonight and it seems there’s no woman in the world as far away from him as she is, even the woman who gave him the drink of water and disappeared is closer to him than she is, and he puts a hand to his loins and straightens up, he has to go, he has to escape from here, but before this he must take his leave of her in his own way, how can you be separated from something you never had?
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 cam
e 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?
The Remains of Love Page 32
