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Authors: Emma McEvoy
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summer is still inside you, it returns to you every year. To return here would be a kind of release for you.
After you left I felt nothing for a long time, I continued as normal because I had to, and Avi needed me too. I am not sure, for example, for how long I set the table, on a Saturday evening (when the dining room was closed in deference to the Sabbath) for three people, something I had done automatically for so long. I only know that I did it for a long time, and neither of us looked at or acknowledged the extra plate, yet it was always there, and I continued to do it after I remembered that you were gone. After a time it ceased to be an automatic gesture, but I did it just the same, because I realised that the Saturday that I stopped setting a place for you would be the day that I understood and accepted that you weren’t coming back, and I sensed that Avi needed me to leave that place for you.
That place is gone, Sareet: the plate, the knife, the fork, all the memories and hopeless love that went with the setting of a place for you. We both believed for years, you see, that you would come back. There were no words for what we believed, but nevertheless we believed it absolutely. Words are not always necessary, and now, long after we stopped believing, you say you want to come back. You left us, but that summer never did, it clung to us for years, lived inside us, the heat and the dust and the hopelessness of everything. And your tears. And your leaving. It still clings to us today.
You must realise that this is not an easy decision for me to make, but I believe it to be the right one.
I would rather you not mention the nature of your request to the boy. The fact is that you left him once, and when you did his welfare became my responsibility. I simply believe it is better for him to understand that people do leave and don’t come back. I am not sure that he would benefit from you bursting back into his life, you and all the endless drama that is part of life with you, an integral part of life with you. It would also be easier for me if you continued as before, and wrote only to the boy. It’s preferable to forget all about this business now. I am sorry if this is stark, it is not as I meant it, but I know it to be the right decision, that you have merely lost interest in your Dutch adventure, for some reason you have lost the heart for it all.
And because I know it wouldn’t work. There is little left for you and I, Sareet, little is left of that time and the people we were then, nothing is left of your youth and my energy. You now believe that you would be content to simply come home to us, to this small community, live here again, live this uncomplicated life style after the life you have lived in Amsterdam. You speak of the smell of Avi’s skin after you bathed him, the odour of cheeses and olives and coffee that greeted you at the door of the communal dining room each morning, the storms that blaze across Galilee in the winter, the streaks of lightning across the sky, gleaming against the horizon. What happened to you that you discarded your life here, the people that filled it, suddenly and ruthlessly and with the blind persistence that I came to expect of you? Or does it matter? For the loss is there, whether or not you realise what it is you lost, or when, or why, and the reason no longer matters.
An empty autumn evening is falling on the Galilee, and I have said all there is to say. It is late, the rain is battering the windows, the thunder rolls in the distance. I am reminded of the young soldier I was when I met you and the summer that followed, that first summer after the war. Do you remember when we first met on the steps outside the kibbutz dining room, came face to face for the first time. How you reached out and squeezed my wrist to welcome me home that day, as many people did, but there was only you! Do you remember that first summer, sitting outside on those airless evenings, your head on my
After you left I felt nothing for a long time, I continued as normal because I had to, and Avi needed me too. I am not sure, for example, for how long I set the table, on a Saturday evening (when the dining room was closed in deference to the Sabbath) for three people, something I had done automatically for so long. I only know that I did it for a long time, and neither of us looked at or acknowledged the extra plate, yet it was always there, and I continued to do it after I remembered that you were gone. After a time it ceased to be an automatic gesture, but I did it just the same, because I realised that the Saturday that I stopped setting a place for you would be the day that I understood and accepted that you weren’t coming back, and I sensed that Avi needed me to leave that place for you.
That place is gone, Sareet: the plate, the knife, the fork, all the memories and hopeless love that went with the setting of a place for you. We both believed for years, you see, that you would come back. There were no words for what we believed, but nevertheless we believed it absolutely. Words are not always necessary, and now, long after we stopped believing, you say you want to come back. You left us, but that summer never did, it clung to us for years, lived inside us, the heat and the dust and the hopelessness of everything. And your tears. And your leaving. It still clings to us today.
You must realise that this is not an easy decision for me to make, but I believe it to be the right one.
I would rather you not mention the nature of your request to the boy. The fact is that you left him once, and when you did his welfare became my responsibility. I simply believe it is better for him to understand that people do leave and don’t come back. I am not sure that he would benefit from you bursting back into his life, you and all the endless drama that is part of life with you, an integral part of life with you. It would also be easier for me if you continued as before, and wrote only to the boy. It’s preferable to forget all about this business now. I am sorry if this is stark, it is not as I meant it, but I know it to be the right decision, that you have merely lost interest in your Dutch adventure, for some reason you have lost the heart for it all.
And because I know it wouldn’t work. There is little left for you and I, Sareet, little is left of that time and the people we were then, nothing is left of your youth and my energy. You now believe that you would be content to simply come home to us, to this small community, live here again, live this uncomplicated life style after the life you have lived in Amsterdam. You speak of the smell of Avi’s skin after you bathed him, the odour of cheeses and olives and coffee that greeted you at the door of the communal dining room each morning, the storms that blaze across Galilee in the winter, the streaks of lightning across the sky, gleaming against the horizon. What happened to you that you discarded your life here, the people that filled it, suddenly and ruthlessly and with the blind persistence that I came to expect of you? Or does it matter? For the loss is there, whether or not you realise what it is you lost, or when, or why, and the reason no longer matters.
An empty autumn evening is falling on the Galilee, and I have said all there is to say. It is late, the rain is battering the windows, the thunder rolls in the distance. I am reminded of the young soldier I was when I met you and the summer that followed, that first summer after the war. Do you remember when we first met on the steps outside the kibbutz dining room, came face to face for the first time. How you reached out and squeezed my wrist to welcome me home that day, as many people did, but there was only you! Do you remember that first summer, sitting outside on those airless evenings, your head on my
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