The Remains of Love Read Free Page B

grey dove. Only last night, before going to sleep, she peered again at the window sill and saw the eggs gleaming at her from the darkness of the nest like a pair of benevolent eyes, and at once the dove appeared and covered them with her body. Warmth wafted towards her from the body of the dove, gentle tranquillity, sweet memory. What could be simpler, just sitting like that, without moving, for hours upon hours, eyes alert but body still, all gathered together, concentrating on the objective. She has moved the eggs from here, flying away in the darkness of night with a white egg in her beak; she laid it in a different nest which she prepared in advance, and came back to collect the one left behind. Was it her insistent staring that scared the bird away?
    What a strange pain, she mumbles as the phone rings on, what a stupid, unnecessary pain, to stand like this, in gloomy reverence, as if before a desecrated tomb, confronting the stack of pine needles, which yesterday was a house of miracles and today is a meaningless agglomeration, and she holds out her hand to the tiny cradle and crumbles it. The spring breeze will disperse the twigs in a moment, and no trace will be left of the life that for a whole week was so vibrant here, filling her with a strange emotion: two eggs in the nest, one egg unhatched.
    Why did she take them? she asks aloud. More and more she’s been hearing her own voice recently, surprisingly loud, especially when there’s no one else around, her thoughts emerge from her throat unrestrained and it’s the voice that exposes their nakedness, their embarrassing simplicity. Must buy milk, she hears herself announcing with solemn intensity, as if talking about a national assignment, or I’m going to be late, or where is Nitzan? It seems this question has been heard again and again in the void surrounding her, and it isn’t so much where is her only daughter located at this particular moment, because there are still simple answers to this one: she’s at school, or at a friend’s house, or on her way home – but where is her heart, which all through the years has been close to hers and is now alien to her, beating against her vigorously and aggressively. How can even the most natural of loves turn into disappointed love, she wonders, following the child with yearning eyes, trying to tempt her with those treats that in the past elicited cries of sweet delight from her: come on, Nitzi, let’s bake a cake together, come on, let’s go to the cinema, have you seen there’s a new pizzeria just round the corner, fancy a pizza? But now she meets a look of sulky indifference and a cold voice answers her, some other time, Mum, I’ve no time just now, but time for her friends, she has plenty of that, because straightaway she’s making arrangements with Tamar or with Shiri, disappearing as if escaping from her, and Dina watches her go with a frozen smile, trying to hide the hurt. What a strange pain.
    Leave her alone, let her grow up, Gideon scolds her, anyone would think you wanted to spend time with your mother when you were an adolescent, but she doesn’t answer; her answers to him are left unspoken, roaming around in the void of her belly and finding no outlet. It isn’t the same thing at all, my mother actually preferred my brother, my mother was never a pleasant companion, with those depressing stories of hers about the lake, she always saw only herself, she didn’t know how to be a mother, she learned too late.
    Two eyes, again she hears her voice breaking the silence, coarse as the voice of the dumb, two precious stones, diamonds that gleamed from the window sill as if from the floor of a dark mine shaft, why did she take them, what scared her away? The guttural wail of a cat answers this question, drowning out the ringing of the phone with another hot, hairy flame, squirming between her legs. Where have you been, Rabbit? she greets him ceremoniously, filling his bowl with dried titbits, where have you