The Remains of Love (34 page)

What didn’t they say about her? She’s lazy, she’s spoilt, she dreams instead of working, she exploits her workmates, how could such a daughter be produced by such a father? Well, what’s so surprising about it, have you forgotten she has a mother too? No wonder if you have forgotten; she’s forgotten she has a mother, poor girl, and the mother has forgotten she’s a mother. Have you seen her? Only just returned and she’s off again, to America this time, for a year, on a fund-raising campaign, while we are stuck here cultivating the blisters on our hands. This is the sour fruit of the mother who wears stylish dresses and travels to the centre on a Sunday and returns to the kibbutz on a Thursday, that’s assuming she’s in the country at all. Poor girl, poor husband, and how can he let her do this, as if he doesn’t mind being left alone all the time, a grass widower. But she was so proud of her mother; choking in her admiration she listened to her stories about training farms that she set up in Poland years ago, and the importance of training up young Jews in manual work, so when they arrive in the country they can be integrated straightaway into the kibbutz system, and the importance of meeting the Jews of America and persuading them to contribute to the funding of the settlements, so we can build ourselves up here, so we can defend ourselves, don’t worry, Hemda, the time will soon pass, in less than a year I’ll be back and you can write me long letters, you write them so nicely, and Hemda would part from her, all her energy drained, knowing she too was giving according to her ability, she was giving her mother, and this was more than she could afford.

And even in adult life she was late, by a minute or two that would ruin the whole day, who ever heard of a teacher who’s late? Teachers were suspect anyway, because they didn’t do manual work, only when their turn came round or they were conscripted, and they were always looked at askance, all the more so a teacher who didn’t arrive on time, who didn’t force her pupils to do homework, who didn’t believe in exams or awarding marks. Even the pupils who benefited most from this used to betray her, informing on her to their parents, but she abhorred competition, detested authority and recoiled from discipline, she wanted them to learn willingly and not under compulsion since the wounds of the coercion inflicted on her had not yet healed, and how could she enforce it on others? Teaching itself was almost forced on her, what choices did she have after the war? Dairymaid, poultry-keeper, cook, nurse? Obviously teaching was preferable, but she wanted to teach literature or Bible studies and they forced her to teach agriculture, with nature study in the more junior classes. She never forgave them for compelling her to rip away the mysteries surrounding her own nature, it was too close and too precious to her for its precepts to be taught and turned into a burden for her and for her pupils, a resented imposition, as the routine of her whole life had rapidly become. How disappointing was adult life, did her father feel the same, did her mother feel it too? Apparently not, since she was immersed in other questions entirely, how mankind should behave, rather than how life should be perceived.

But that’s the way her adult life seemed to her then, constantly contracting just like the surface of the lake, between the steel monsters digging into it, between the western channel and the eastern channel, sinking with the declining water level. Under sentence of death the lake wasted away before her eyes year after year, but unlike her it wasn’t giving up so easily, heaping more and more problems on the engineers with their sophisticated machines brought in from America. Again and again it drove them back, again and again work was suspended because the lake refused to go quietly; it blocked the drainage channel, disrupted the ploughing of the first furrow, and even at the last and the most terrible stage of all, when they removed the steel joists of the dam, and the place was buzzing with crowds of the distinguished and the curious, all eager to see the spectacle of public execution, as they had been promised it would be emptied within a few hours, they were forced to go back the way they came, since the lake held out stubbornly for many long weeks, until the winter came and flooded it all over again. Every time she believed it had finally succeeded in outwitting them, but they came back with alternative solutions, until she realised these were only the dying spasms. They weren’t giving up, determined to offer it as a sacrifice and even call it a new act of creation, as they were determined to call the stubbornness of the lake sterility, and fertility when it finally came they called a blessing, although only a few years after the subjugation of the lake the blessing disintegrated in its turn.

What was all this, she sighs, and for what, and why is she the one who has carried on so long, outliving her lake, outliving her parents, outliving her husband? Even for the job of dying she’s late, snatching another moment of idleness, daydreaming, and there they are, all of them, obedient labourers in their working clothes, cultivating the ruined fields, harvesting the hollow olives, drawing black milk from the corpses of cattle, gathering the fossilised eggs of dead chickens, going out in the evening to catch the skeletons of fish, so much toil and all in vain, after all the dead need no nourishment.

So much toil and all in vain, that’s exactly the way she feels even today, as there’s no taste to all of this, no taste to the food, no taste to the olives, to the fruits since they weren’t picked with love but with hatred, with arrogance. How arrogant they were then, adults and children too, convinced this was the superior style of life, everyone giving according to his ability and receiving according to his needs, but why the relentless scrutiny, how is the other one behaving, who is exploiting whom? It seemed to her that even in her sleep she was being tested, her bed surrounded by judges and lawmakers growing more severe from hour to hour, and even now she wakes up in fear, she’s late again, looking around her almost apologetically, hoping no one will notice, after all she has to set a personal example, the precept her father drummed into her.

Are you awake, Grandma? she suddenly hears a voice she hasn’t heard in ages, she mustn’t be late this time, she needs to be present in time and in place, probing her gums to be sure her teeth are where they should be, is that you, Nitzi? Yes, I’m awake.

How are you feeling? the girl asks, and Hemda holds out her hand to the warm breath, her eyes still closed; most of the day they are masked by the lids, like blinds which there’s no point in rolling up, and now it seems her brain is incapable of contriving even this simple movement. Between her fingers is a clump of hair that reminds her of her mother’s hair, when she used to dry it in the sun after the Sabbath shampoo, her hands caressing the fragrant cloud and her eyes fluttering with the effort. Are you all right, Grandma? the girl asks, her voice a little anxious, and Hemda hurriedly says, yes, don’t worry, it isn’t hurting as much now, as an orange light penetrates her eyelids and sends beams of honey spreading from the top of her head to her toes, how sweet this girl is, but how little she knows about her, as if she’s really dead, and how happy she was when she was born, and longed to be a part of her upbringing, but Dina froze her out, allowing her no foothold in their love. Just once, when they went to Venice and left the girl with her, she tasted this sweetness, which was soon taken away from her, and she hoped that when the girl grew up she would liberate herself from her mother’s intermediary role and draw closer to her, but even when she grew up Nitzan was always a little reserved, as if she had no need of her, has she really not needed her until this moment?

Now her eyelids lift and her eyes open to the pale, slightly freckled face, its transparent, inward beauty stealing slowly into her heart, who does she resemble? More and more it seems that she sees reflected in her the features of her Elik in his youth, let’s just hope she doesn’t turn out as hard as he was, she’ll succeed in retaining her sweetness. She still looks like a little girl, she hasn’t changed much since she was six years old and stayed with her for a week, and she remembers how she wanted to sleep in her bed so she could hide in her heart, so she said. Hide from whom? she asked and the girl replied, from the separation, and so they experienced seven nights of tranquillity, how simple this was, for the first time in her life, simple to sleep, simple to love, a little girl who isn’t her own, and she says, how nice it is to see you, it seems years since we met each other, have you come here alone, without your Mum?

Yes, Mum’s at work, Nitzan replies, I haven’t even told her about coming to see you, and Hemda asks, and how are you, how are things at school? – trying to find some hook to hold on to because in fact she knows nothing about the life of her granddaughter. She remembers how old she is, knows she enjoys reading and painting, maybe photography too, and not much more than this, but Nitzan immediately interrupts this fumbling conversation, there’s no school, this is the long vacation, and in a gloomy voice she asks, tell me, Grandma, can I come and move in with you?

Of course, why do you need to ask? she replies, are Mum and Dad going abroad? And the girl says no, I just don’t want to live at home any more, and Hemda ponders her words, feeling suddenly very tired, any moment now her eyelids will fall, taking with them the clarity that is slithering like an elusive fish in the lake of her consciousness, she must try to catch it with the ploys familiar to her, the trawl-net opening in a circular movement, white durra by the handful, oars beating the water, get away, get out of here, and now the whistle is heard from far away, must hurry back to the shore and drag the boats on to dry land, the waves are rolling slow and long until they turn on their backs, spouting white foam. Don’t go to sleep, it isn’t your turn to sleep yet, her father rebukes her, and she shakes herself, staring at the figure sitting beside her. Don’t go to sleep, Grandma, stay with me, and she moistens her lips with her tongue, they taste of blood, what did you say? And Nitzan sighs, I said Mum doesn’t want me at home any more, I’m interfering with her plans, and Hemda asks again, what did you say, what’s happening to your mother? An ugly satisfaction sweeps over her.

Tell me, Grandma, supposing you’ve got an old pair of shoes that you’ve worn for years and you don’t need them any more, what would you do with them? she asks, and Hemda smiles, well, you know what we were like on the kibbutz, we wore our shoes until they fell to bits, my father was proud that he never threw away a pair of shoes in his life, and the girl interrupts her again, but these days it’s different, these days you throw them out, right? You put them out beside the bin until someone who needs them picks them up, right? And Hemda nods, I suppose so, why do you ask? You’ve found some shoes you want to pick up and your Mum says no? And the girl answers in a cracked voice, don’t you believe it, Mum’s throwing me out now like an old pair of shoes.

Throwing you out? She’s bewildered, what are you talking about? Your mother loves you very much, but the girl protests with a strange kind of snort, you don’t know what’s been going on, Grandma, she doesn’t love me at all, not any more, and she grabs a tissue from the box on the medicine table and wipes her nose, laying her head on the old woman’s shoulder and sobbing sporadically.

That’s enough crying, she caresses her hair sadly, she’s heard all this before, more than once, what’s going on in that family of theirs, sitting around the fire of love and tirelessly measuring the height of the flames, what strange kind of torture is unfolding for them from generation to generation, how has such an implausible idea popped into her head? Of course she loves you, she insists, you’re her daughter, her only daughter!

It isn’t like that, the girl yells, she wants to adopt a new child, do you get it? She’s suddenly got the idea of trading me in! And Hemda is stunned, what do you mean, trade you in? Oddments of words, fragments of conversations, she stitches together with a clumsy hand, who said what to whom and when, it seems the mouths are changing, the tongues rolling, but the transparent spool of memory is still in her hands, she must not let it fall again, what’s this about trading you in, I loved the pair of you equally! Fragments of words, oddments of conversations, and still her granddaughter is moaning on her shoulder, for as long as I was her sweet little girl she loved me, but now I’m bigger and not as much hers any more, she’s finding this hard to cope with and she’s come up with a simple solution, to give me up and take another child in my place, so I don’t intend to get in her way, I’m moving out and leaving her alone with her new sprog.

What’s this story you’re telling me, she mumbles, and for a moment there is such a clear picture in her mind, she must put words to it before they are erased, this is her opportunity and perhaps there won’t be another, one more step, Hemda, don’t fall down now, and she says with an effort, you and your mother, you’re not a married couple, it’s true that in a couple a new partner may replace a former one, but a child? Think of your cousins for example, when little Yotam was born did he replace Tomer?

This is completely different, Grandma, you don’t understand, the girl detaches herself from her grandmother’s shoulder, takes off her glasses and puts them down on the oval table, she wants to adopt, she wants to bring a child home, a total stranger from the other side of the world, and Hemda says, every child is a stranger until he comes out into the light of the world and sometimes even afterwards, but a child is a child, there’s no real distinction here, it isn’t that different from pregnancy.

The fact is she didn’t want to be pregnant! And another fact, she didn’t want another child when I was younger! It’s only now she’s suddenly remembered, and that means her love is conditional, and the moment I’m not giving her what she wants she’s looking for someone else, and it’s all my fault, she wails, I was horrible to her, and she couldn’t cope with it, and now she’s punishing me by deserting me the way I deserted her, she’s stopped loving me and I deserve it, and Hemda takes the trembling girl in her arms again, as she carries on without a moment’s pause, I didn’t mean to, it just happened, I don’t understand it myself, suddenly things have changed and I’ve started going round more with my friends, and every time I came home I found Mum waiting for me with this really depressed look on her face, and so I preferred sleeping over at my friends’ houses, and even when I wanted to be with her and tell her things, the words just didn’t come out right. Suddenly I was angry with her and saying bad things to her and then I was angry with myself and taking it out on her, is it my fault I’ve grown up? Only dead children don’t grow up!