“You coming?” said Uri, opening the door gingerly. “You’ve been here for hours, immersed in these letters.”
I got up, my legs shaking. “What’s up, Aya?” Leaning on him, I could hardly stand, could barely steady myself. I couldn’t answer.
The key. Did I remember to lock the room? Those piles of letters – a private enclave in the middle of the house.
“Tell me, what’s going on?”
“What do you mean what’s going on?”
“We can’t go on like this.”
“So what’ll we do?”
“Aya, that’s what I’m asking you.”
“I don’t know, Uri. I really don’t know.”
“I saw that you’d brought the letters in from the storeroom, I never said anything. Then you took them with you to Spain, and I still didn’t say a word. But it’s going on and on, when’s it going to end? You’ve been at it for months, you’re not here. Why can’t you just leave them alone?”
“I just can’t. I have to remember, how I was then.”
“You never really explained to me why it’s so important to remember how things were thirty years ago.”
“I don’t know, Uri, I can’t explain it. But I just can’t live with this gap, this vacuum, not remembering myself. It’s like I’m standing here and there’s this void beneath me, ground that I can’t stand on. Every little thing that I can recall sort of calms me down. And I just have to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“What happened to me when I met him; why it was like an earthquake, what happened to me.”
“I try not to remember all that.”
“I know, Uri, sweetheart, I’m so sorry about it.”
And I touched his arm.
“So if you’re so sorry, why don’t you just leave those letters alone.”
“It’s got nothing to do with it.”
“But why don’t you just leave them?”
“I’ve just explained it to you.”
“You haven’t explained it. I don’t understand why you even kept them. You should have chucked them out ages ago.”
***
“I’m sorry Aya, I didn’t mean it. I see you’re really hurt.”
“Of course I feel hurt. How could you say something like that?”
“I’ve already said I’m sorry.”
“How could you say something like that?”
“I didn’t mean it. But why can’t you just leave them? Can you explain that to me?”
“If you’re angry I can’t explain anything.”
“I’m not angry, I’m asking.”
“You are angry.”
“Aya, don’t do this to me.”
“So drop it.”
***
Drop it. Give in, retreat. Retreat somewhere in our home that doesn’t exist. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to be.
A deafening silence.
Drifting about.
Uri downstairs, in the living room. Me upstairs, in the bedroom. I go downstairs, he goes out to the garden.
Silence. Complete silence.
And in the morning, Uri is up. Dragging myself from bed, a ghastly face stares back at me from the mirror. How am I going to go to work today, no amount of makeup is going to help. “Uri, I don’t know what to do,” I mutter, every syllable requiring effort. “So cancel everything and stay home.” “I can’t cancel, Uri, you know that I’ve got a crazy week at work.” And Uri, with his stiff neck, can scarcely move. He sits down on the side of the bed, sighing, trying to do up the buckles of his sandals. “Leave it,” I mutter, bending down to do them up for him; he needs some new sandals, I always buy them for him, next week, maybe I can do it next week. I’m so tired, exhausted, if only it were evening already so I could crawl back into bed. Suddenly I see a sheet of letter paper on the floor. It’s been slipped under the door.
Mum and Dad,
I can’t bear it any more. I know that I shouldn’t be asking, but I just can’t take it. Tell me that nothing serious is going on. That nothing has happened. Have you forgotten that I’m no longer a child? I’ll be in the army soon. You can tell me, I just can’t cope with all this hush-hush stuff. I asked and you tried to give me the slip. I don’t believe that something has happened between you. It’s simply not conceivable. Even a serious illness – I’m wracking my brains – doesn’t seem like it to me. Because otherwise Mom would be spending her days and nights outside the house, taking care of whoever it was. And you don’t seem sick to me. So why are there these days, like last year, last winter, and again now, when you don’t leave your room all evening? I no longer know if the migraine is real or an excuse. Mom doesn’t say a word the entire day. And you, Dad, with that crick in your neck, or that backache; the packets of aspirin all over the carpet. And in the evening Dad tells me to make sure that Liora’s finished her homework and to fix us something to eat, and you make out like you’re going to bed at nine o’clock. I have the feeling that you’ve been talking the entire night. I can’t imagine what could have happened. Sometimes everything seems OK, like always. Mom, you used to come home from work and go straight out to the garden, you’d kick off those high heels that you can’t stand, you’d take the spade and you’d go out barefoot to do some digging. You’d make food, humming along with the cooking. And Dad, you’d do crossword puzzles with us, and take me to football. There was always music in the house, songs from the year dot. Never mind that we were sick and tired of them. I always thought our home was fine. My friends all think it is. I don’t know what to do. Tell me what’s happened, and tell me that it’s going to be OK, that everything will go back to how it was.
Love you so much,
Iddo
22. Hagar
“Why hang on to all these old dishes and electrical appliances? You don’t need them, no one’s going to be using them anymore,” said Yaron to me on Saturday. The kids hadn’t come home this weekend and we had finally got round to tackling the storeroom.
Why do I keep them, and for that matter, why do you hold on to old letters, and wedding invitations? Why — can you explain that to me?
It’s not going away, it’s been months. I try my best not to think about it, but this green recycling bag, it’s slap in front of my nose. I should have taken those letters the moment I found them, taken them and shredded them up, or thrown them out, simply tossed them away, far from the house, so they wouldn’t make their way back. I still had the nerve then, that’s what I should have done.
Now I don’t dare to do it anymore.
In the end I didn’t come to your wedding. What does she mean – In the end I didn’t come – why didn’t she come?
Perhaps it was hard for her.
Why should it be hard for her?
Maybe she never wanted to part from him.
And him, what about him? Why wasn’t he able to talk about her to me? Once, when I got up the courage to ask, it made him angry. I still remember what he said, “Why are you bringing this up? Why talk about our past friends?” And later, “I can’t tell you anything. Everything gets you upset.” I didn’t respond, I’ve always kept quiet whenever he begins to get angry. But later, I did summon up the courage to say to him, “Yaron, it’s hurtful. You know I never had a boyfriend before you.” And then he realized, “I’m sorry, Hagar, I’m really sorry. But believe me, maybe it’s for the best like this.”
Why should it be for the best like this? What did he mean by that?
Their picture. If only I hadn’t seen it.
How can anyone forget a picture like that? I must have gazed at it hundreds of times more than they did back then.
It’s like I know it by heart. Can there be something like this, knowing a picture by heart?
They’re sitting together on a rock, in the middle of a trek, close, holding hands. There are mountains around, it looks like the desert, I wonder where it was, perhaps Eilat. Maybe that’s why he never wants to go to Eilat. Aya is gazing into the distance, smiling. All
her features are smiling, her eyes, her cheeks, her neck, everything about her is smiling. She’s tanned, her teeth are shiny, her hair loose and flowing, there must have been a slight breeze. That lace blouse of hers, which I’ve seen in another picture, the lace-up one, with the embroidery. A young girl, scarcely more than a child.
And Yaron, also barely more than a child, slightly older than Iddo. He’s touching her, looking at her, so focused on her. And that look in his eyes, what a look, how can anyone describe it, his face glowing, as if he had a light that shone from inside his body.
I ransacked the house today, turned it upside down, thirty-four albums, three hundred pictures in each one of them. I went through them all, a million pictures. Once he had black hair. He was a little trimmer. The forelock and side parting – they were always there. His features have barely changed, he looks so like Iddo. I went through the whole of our life in pictures today.
But I didn’t find one; not a single picture of ours is like theirs. There’s no we, no me, with him, exactly… exactly like in that picture.
And then I recalled Yael, what she went through after she saw Jerry with that slut; it was such a dreadful time for her. How come I didn’t understand it at the time? I remember telling her, “What difference does it make, Yaeli, what difference does it make how Jerry met that woman, how he started up with her, or the one before her. He’s been like this for years, it’s not the first time, it doesn’t matter exactly what they did.” He who delves too deeply digs his own grave. The words of Agnon from Michal’s literature lessons suddenly came to me.[7]
“You have no idea what it’s like to go through it,” she told me, “I can’t begin to tell you where the images in my head take me, everything matters to me, down to the slightest little detail.” And she told me everything that she had seen in their bedroom, and what she hadn’t seen, the images that were torturing her, “Does she have a spare tyre round her middle? How was she with him? What did he do to her? What did she do to him? You have no idea what a nightmare it is, Hagar, you have simply no idea.”
And afterwards she said, “And you never will. Yaron would never, ever do something like that to you.”
So why do I feel like Yael? Why do I need to know every single detail about when they were together?
How could Aya have written to him, “I ache for you, my Roni, my body is aching for you; it’s a longing I feel in every fibre of my body. I’m counting the hours till we’re together again.”
And another letter.
“It’s perfect for me with you, my Roni.”
I never said anything like this to him in my entire life.
I can’t even imagine myself talking like that.
Why do I need to know what she wrote to him? What he said to her? What exactly they did?
Or what kind of a body he had.
Or how he was. What he said. As if it wasn’t him, maybe more like a different Yaron.
Yael screamed. How she screamed at Jerry. My God.
We heard it; even the neighbours on the other side heard it.
What can possibly be left of you if your husband does something like that to you? Nothing.
How could you not feel a complete nothing? How could you hold your head up around people?
Speak. Smile.
Get out of bed, drag yourself to work.
Be a mother.
Get dressed, look at yourself in the mirror.
Be with him, give him your innermost self.
You can’t do a thing after something like that. Nothing.
Only collapse, fall apart into pieces. Like a three dimen-sional wooden puzzle, its middle part taken out.
23. Aya
Last evening, our love began to flow again, at last. His arms returned to what they’d always been. My Uri, so caring, so loving. He turns to me, turns me to him. My flimsy blouse hardly conceals them, their longing for him. The blouse buttons absorb their longing, respond to them, gape open. My face smiles at him in the darkness, excitement flooding my heart, a quiver rippling over my body. My arms are pressing him close, clinging to him with all my might, enveloping him in my embrace. The darkness is quiet, the air is all still, there is only our breathing, getting stronger and stronger. My heart is full, spilling over its banks, it’s so good that the air has gone back to what it was; to be feeling again what has dwelt in our souls for so many years.
***
And time goes by; I haven’t managed to halt the passage of time. To stop it would mean renewing my connection with Yaron. Not to let the years drift by; time, and more time. Like the twenty-eight years that have slipped through our fingertips. Until one day it’ll be too late. Can time stop now, can it wait? Each new wrinkle on my face tells me – no, it won’t, time won’t wait for you. The right thing to do would have been to fit him into some kind of routine, slot him into my life. I should have done it long ago, meet up from time to time, keep up with what was going on, follow the changes. Somehow, simply, easily. These changes, when you keep up with them, they’re less noticeable, less felt.
Am I completely fantasizing?
“Completely,” says Uri.
“But why, Uri, explain to me, why not?”
“There’s no such thing, there’s no such thing in the world. He told you that it’s impossible. That’s how it is. That’s what I’m also telling you.”
“Don’t tell me that’s how it is, you know I can’t stand that sentence.”
“So what am I supposed to tell you? I don’t know what to say any more.”
“What are we going to do, Uri, what’s going to happen?”
“I just can’t understand you; you should have walked away from all this ages ago.”
“I don’t know, if only I could understand what’s going on.”
“Those letters have thrown you off balance. And look what they’re doing to us.”
“I can’t stop reading them.” Not that I want to stop.
“How many are left?”
“Enough,” I said. Three hundred and eighty-two, I knew, but didn’t say.
***
And some time later. Days had gone by, perhaps weeks.
“What’s on your mind, Aya?”
“How did you know?”
“You’re completely immersed in those letters of Yaron’s.”
We were in a place of words, in a place where there’s no existence without speaking, because love flows first through words.
“Never mind, Uri. Let’s leave it.”
Silence; his gestures also falling mute.
“It simply isn’t going to work, Aya. It’s impossible like this.”
“I’m trying so hard to get through this alone.”
“I know, but it’s not going to work. We’ve always been together in everything. There’s no other way we can be.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
“Simply tell me, talk to me.”
“How can I drag you into this, Uri, tell me.” My head is on his shoulder, his hand in mine, our legs intertwined. “I’ve decided a thousand times that I won’t talk about it; I wanted to spare you this.”
“We tried, but it’s not working. Sometimes you’re completely taken over by this reading.”
“I’m afraid to tell you.”
I remember his arm around me, our fingers interlaced, waiting. Can love really overcome it all?
“I don’t really want to finish reading them; I’d like them to stay with me for a bit. Like a book that you don’t want to finish. It’s my story there.”
***
Uri and me, our fingers tangled together.
Are we still like we once were, at the beginning?
A green lawn, overlooking the desert; the Dead Sea on the horizon. Ancient pine trees, a Jerusalem spring morning. First day of the half-term holiday, the university campus on Mount Scopus. My Uri, in shorts, as always. He’s leaning against a tree; that shock of brown curls that he had; no glasses on his face. And me, sprawled out on the grass, my hea
d on his knees. I was also in shorts, and a tank top. Our sandals next to us, our student bags lying nearby. It was our first year, and the sky was blue. The sky was so blue; there was not a single cloud in it.
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