Yesterday, when I had just started, the telephone suddenly rang. I immediately gathered up the envelopes and stuffed them into that green bag, put it back into the new place at the top of the laundry room cupboard.
It was just a phone call from the school secretary. But after that I didn’t get back to them.
If he’d known, he’d be furious.
And rightfully so.
Or maybe not. He might understand.
Maybe he would even try to get me to calm down, tell me to forget it, he isn’t in contact with her.
There are couples who don’t talk. Yael hasn’t really talked to Jerry for years. Well… just household expenses, shopping, the car, parents’ meetings, hardly even that... And the family holiday, once a year they were still taking a family holiday together, until a few years ago, when his Lordship discovered Thailand. “Every man needs Thailand once a year,” he said to Yael, without a shred of shame. And later, I even heard him boasting at the gym, winking at some of the girls who were standing there, “When a guy says that he’s travelling to Thailand to see some temples – don’t believe him.”
And us.
We do speak.
A little.
Not about everything.
I do my real talking with Yael.
And what about him. Does he have real talks?
About what?
With whom?
Not everything has to be spoken about, Yaron would always say. When you reveal things it’s like you lose a bit of yourself, a part of you; if you say it all, in the end there’s nothing left of you.
Maybe he’s right, maybe everyone really does need their own world, maybe it’s fine like that, perhaps we’d suffocate without it, how can you tell?
17. Aya
Paris
Another business trip. Opening a new office in France and training the local financial department. Currency laws, tax regulations, European commerce. Marathon meetings, cups of coffee brought in, taken out, warm baguettes at dawn dissolve what’s left of the night. I can see nothing but loads of tables and figures. The week passes, I finish working, at last. Mustn’t forget to send Edward a summary report. And shut down the computer; get a break from those emails at last.
Shaking off the tension clinging to my muscles, it’s like taking off a heavy backpack after a gruelling trek. I have only a few remaining hours to summon up the energy to roam around a bit, to feel Paris. All this beauty, how could I have nearly missed it?
Maps, train stops, lurching on the metro. Into my walking shoes at last, with only a small, light backpack over my shoulder. Hesitantly speaking French, numbers and verbs which haven’t seen the light of day for dozens of years, are now floating up from the obscurity of my memory. Who decided, and when, and why didn’t they consult me – what would be gathered and kept in the underground tunnels of memory, and now emerge into the light, eyes blinking and dazed with surprise. And how come what I so wanted to remember – Yaron – why, precisely, did those memories elude me?
Paris. Standing on a side street, the plucked sounds of a harp in the air, such a stirring ambiance, electrifying. Tiny boutiques, vending stalls by the riverside. Scarves, jewellery, paintings, scattered among the tiny cafés. Everything is so vivid and beautiful… is everyone always smiling here? The pavements spruced up by this morning’s early rain, a hesitant sun peeping through, my nostrils filled with the scent of such freshness. A young couple locked in an embrace, caressing one another as if alone in the world. Uri, where are you? Why aren’t you here now? Leaning against a stone wall, the telephone, a small and wondrous instrument, emitting signals of love. My Uri. Waiting for you, yearning for you, his words reaching me. And me for you, whispering back. The cordless phone lines, scaling mountains, traversing countries, conducting longing along the wires, dissolving the soul. I see him holed up in our bedroom, his body hunched around the phone. Where would you like to feel me, he whispers, a roguish smile in his eyes, as always. My heart leaps towards him, here… and here… and here, I smile, blushing.
Landing. A quiet night ride, the car sailing into the dark, in the last watch of the night. The intense silence of night envelopes the fields, resting on them like a soft blanket. The house, the children. Curled up in their beds, their sleep deep and tranquil, responding to my embrace. Our bedroom, unusually festive and neat as if to say, “We’ve been waiting for you here.” Gathered into my body’s imprint that was left empty alongside him. His hands, so warm and soft, encircle me, embrace my heart.
***
Is love here, just as it always was? It was here this morning, no way that it wasn’t. The sun came through the flowers of the curtain, six times in a row I said to Uri how good it was for me with him, we hugged one another with our entire bodies pressed together, could have stayed like that for hours.
And the words, the words that were here in this room, are these the words that will linger?
“Uri, can you feel the air in here?”
Pressing his face to my neck.
“I can feel you.”
“But the air, the light, can you feel it?”
He takes a breath, inhales me into him.
He’s silent. He waits for me to paint the picture in my mind, to find the words.
“The air, it’s radiant; these motes of dust, look at the light in them, as if the air here is full of pearls, can you see it?”
He looks, he draws even closer to me. His eyes are closed, his face is smiling, our bodies are pressed tight against one another.
“It’s so perfect for me with you,” the words escape from my soul.
Autumn
And time flies, Yaron. It’s unbelievable how time is the least objective, the least precise, and the least measurable thing in the world. The short period that we were in touch, a few weeks. A world full of change, addictive excitement. Can one really get addicted to excitement? How long are the seconds on a rollercoaster, how does a soul within a tempest register time? And now, autumn is here once again, soon it’ll be winter; the nights are getting longer; time is changing, shortening. Life is steadily shrinking, turning inward. The air is clearing, returning to transparency. Is it a good thing, this return to everyday routine; is it right or does it usher in a vacuum? What is life without excitement?
My Liora
My Liora, Liora, my love. I so love to savour her tuneful name in my thoughts. Already fourteen, a real teenager. A whole year has gone by. Her previous birthday is so entwined in my memory with Yaron. The opening scene of the entire past year.
She surprises me, my daughter. Lying in wait for an opportunity. The two of us alone on a car trip, questions fired at me from the back seat. “Mummy, when was your first date? Did you have a boyfriend before Daddy? Why is it never the right time for questions? How is it that you don’t exactly remember?”
I swallow hard and manage to change the subject, like changing gears, turning the wheel at the last moment, an exercise in evasion. It’s strange, I think to myself, and not really right. Our previous lives simply do not exist for our children.
“Children don’t need to know everything, we don’t need to be that open,” Uri says in the evening, as we sit round the kitchen table, catching up on the kind of day we’ve had, as we always do. “Uri love, it’s not right to be so closed, keeping things hidden, as if we never had a previous life,” I say to him. “She’s asking because of those soap operas, she’s putting in way too much time in front of the television,” he replies, changing the subject himself, another exercise in evasion – this time from me.
“Budge up, Liora sweetie, make room for me,” I whisper to her, into her sleep. Her pink bed, a Saturday morning. The soft blanket enwraps us, hugging her into me. Her finger traces something on my body, my daughter is writing on my tummy with her finger. I try to make out her words. Finally she whispers into my ear, “Liora and Mum for keeps. Two kisses right on the cheeks.”
What are you going through, my child, tell me, with those huge upheavals at school
. Who kissed whom? Shira, who just told Noa, I’m only telling you, who swore Neta to silence, I cross my heart not to tell, who whispered in Liat’s ear, who swore that it’s not because of her that everyone knows. The deepest, darkest secrets, utterly private, the most secret things in the world, scattered all over, like a torn necklace of beads. No one can stop them, rolling away in all directions.
Stop, my child, where are you running to? Slow down a little, my love. This world, the world of girls, and boys, with everything that’s in it, will wait for you.
January 2. A Year has passed
There were 768 envelopes in the box.
I counted.
Yaron,
Do you know that I’m reading your letters? Since my letters, which I so wanted, seem to be gone. I understood that from your silence. Perhaps they’ve evaporated into a mist floating somewhere, above some huge pile of garbage or another. So I’m wandering through your letters, trying to find myself there. Bundles of wads preserved in a storage box which has never been opened. An old storage box, stuck away in the storeroom between piles of things well beyond their expiry date, that haven’t yet been tossed away. And now, now it has made its way to our bedroom.
Our bedroom, with the table in the corner, the bookshelves, a new lampshade, an embroidered bedcover, and a cardboard box. Ancient, shabby, worn edges, from another world. Like an old man standing in the corner, waiting to be approached by other people, not comfortable in the company of youngsters. I needed three whole months to so much as touch it, to reach out over a gap of a dozen inches, between me and the cardboard box. Three months and nearly thirty years. This slow, hesitant start, has turned into an ongoing mission. It’s really amazing, Yaron, our whole relationship is here, between the lines of these letters. And within them, in these innocent, fragile papers, an intense love is folded away, burning fiercely, scorching. I go slowly, stopping from time to time, I take deep breaths, letting my breath empty out and then fill up, over and over again; and the distant past flips back and forth with the present.
One o’clock in the morning, a hotel room. In an ancient city of stunning beauty. Snow outside, Christmas decorations. A trip for work, Spain this time. And a package of letters I took with me, stuffed into the suitcase.
“Why are you taking that?” Uri asked.
“I never get round to reading them at home, perhaps I’ll find the time there,” I said.
A few hours later, as I was struggling with the suitcase zipper: “Uri, can you give me a hand here? The suitcase isn’t closing.”
“Take out those letters, and it’ll close really easily.”
Roofs covered with snow, church spires. The snow falls unceasingly, a hotel room, early hours of the morning. It seems that special conditions are needed for a task of this magnitude.
Another trip for work.
But work can wait, your letters have already waited long enough. Thirty years.
And where are you now, Yaron? Are you at home, is everything fine with both of you, are you both sleeping sound, is Hagar in your arms?
Wandering, all alone, among your words.
Tuesday night
My darling Aya, it’s already night, it’s raining in Haifa. I listened to the forecast, it’s good that there’s no rain yet where you are. I can’t bear to think of you in those tents they give you in Basic Training, outside in the rain.
I’ve just received your letter, Aya’le. You sent it to me when you found a spare moment to write, when you were all doing your training at the camp in the middle of nowhere. “Why do they have to bark at us all the time?” you said about the officers. “Why can’t they just speak? A parade right here, thirty seconds, go! Why do they have to shout out their orders? What’s wrong with just speaking to us?” That’s what you wrote to me, almost crying. And what can I tell you, Aya? How am I going to calm you down? There’s nothing to be done, that’s how it is in the army. But I know you so well, I know there’s no answer in the world that makes you see red like: “That’s how it is.”
I’m glad that you’re writing to me, Aya, but I asked you to tell me more, you know how much I’d like you to describe the surroundings, the sea, the waves, the greenery, as if it weren’t the army. Why can’t you write to me about all this?
I don’t know how to say this to you. That thing that you don’t like me to mention, on your cheek. Is it protruding more now, or does it only seem like that to me because of your new haircut? Now that your hair is always tied back, I know that you have to pull it back, it’s the army. But now it seems to stick out more. I don’t dare to say this to you, I can almost see the tears in your eyes. What can I do, it does bother me. You promised to think about it.
A hotel bathroom. I put on the light. Why is it so dark here? I get close to the mirror. My birthmark, on the right side. It really bothered him. So many tears were shed over that birthmark. How was that possible?
Perhaps it wasn’t the birthmark. Perhaps it was me.
When did I read your letters for the first time, Yaron? What a long, long time ago. Why can’t I seem to find my own fingerprints on these ancient pages, how could I have forgotten it all?
Midnight. The snow goes on falling over the church spires. Another letter comes out of an army envelope, its pages yellowed, your old handwriting.
Sunday night
Aya, another weekend of quarrelling. Waiting and waiting to meet, and then these quarrels. Not that I’m all that upset by it, I don’t think a little quarrel here and there is the end of the world like you do, everyone fights sometimes, but don’t think that I don’t care about it. I’ll never understand what happened yesterday. Don’t you understand that it’s impossible to have a relationship like this, when we tell one another everything? I don’t know where you get this idea from, show me just one couple who are like this. You want us to tell each other everything. Not that I have any problem listening, I wanted you to tell me all that happened, I wanted to hear everything, how they pulled you out of the tents at one in the morning, the arguments – was it actually harassment or wasn’t it; the two girls who started crying in the middle of parade in front of everyone. And finally you asked,how it could turn out that after all this, everyone got angry with you, only because you said that it wasn’t harassment and that you couldn’t lodge a complaint about it. I’m glad you told me, what are friends for? You said that, but you’re forgetting that it was you who wanted to tell me about it, I didn’t force you. I didn’t even ask you to tell me about Isaac, who’s basically flirting with you, and all his jokes. I know you enjoy it, I know you’re fond of him, it doesn’t bother me, I just hope that you don’t get pulled in further. You’ve got to understand that it’s my right to tell you what I want to tell you, why does it bother you so much? So I have some friends who happen to be girls– so what? So we write letters to one another, and I meet up with them, I don’t have to tell you every single thing, why do you go on about it? Everyone has their own world, and their own things, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, I’ve already explained to you. Believe me, Aya, it’s a pity you don’t want to listen; I’m afraid that you’re going to have to pay for it down the line. I really don’t wish it on you, but you aren’t listening. Sometimes I’m afraid that we won’t work things out and stay together. You’ll never find anyone who can be with you the way you want.
Perhaps I wanted to speak too much.
And for him to speak. Not to keep things to himself. Maybe I should blame it on the talking.
You’re wrong, Yaron, Yaron-of-back-then. Flimsy patches of logic that you piled up alongside you – and how could I have responded? I was barely twenty. You sounded so right, that’s how you sounded, not only to yourself, to me too. I couldn’t reply, I had no answers; it was my misery speaking.
There is love without renunciation, there is perfect love. It’s been here in this house for twenty-eight years. It lacked for nothing, we’ve always known; it’s rare, someone once told us, your relationship is rare.
And now, what’ll become of us now?
18. Hagar
Today I found myself going through the letters again; Wednesday is my free day. Hope it won’t become my Wednesday habit.
By now I’m starting to dread being alone at home. What else will I find?
And how could it be that even today, it happened again.
The morning started out just fine. I got up early, while Yaron was fast asleep. I got dressed quietly, put on my pulsometer and set off for a run, by six-thirty I was already back at home. And then I decided to add another fifteen miles of biking up to Little Switzerland.[6] I returned, showered, and sat down to rest on the terrace. It’s a time when the sea is so beautiful. Meanwhile Yaron had got up, I wanted to ask him to bring a jug of water outside. Suddenly he said, “Come on, let me pamper you a bit, you deserve it after that inhuman training session you just did.” He went into the kitchen and made us breakfast: an omelette with herbs, a finely-cut vegetable salad, a pot of tea with fresh mint. When he’s in a good mood he loves taking his time over a salad, he’ll squeeze a fresh lemon, olive oil, taste it, add salt, cut up a little more parsley, he’ll taste it again, lick his fingers, smile to himself, and go on fiddling with the lemon and the oil and the salt until he thinks it’s perfect. It’s so great to see him like this with that smile on his face. By now I’ve already worked up an appetite, those smells! I wanted to go in to help him but decided to wait, it’s lovely when he’s like this. Finally he brought it all outside on a tray, he even fetched down the colourful ceramic set that I love from the top shelf. I got up, my legs had all cramped up but I stood up and we embraced, like that, just as we were, on the terrace. We started eating, and he told me about the lens that he was thinking of buying, meanwhile he was researching it in photography magazines. And I described the route I’d taken that morning, I’ve already started adding in steep gradients, like they’ll have in the marathon. “Good for you – training like this, Hagari, I’m really proud of you.” When we’d finished eating, we cleared the dishes together, and when I started washing the pan he suddenly came up to me quietly and hugged me from behind, like that, by the sink. And then he went out, I knew he wouldn’t be back till midday.
So We Said Goodbye: A Contemporary Fiction Novel Page 8