She refuses to go out and constantly looks for an excuse to go back to bed. “It’s time to sleep. I’ve always been interested in that state of hibernation when you are neither alive nor dead. Then the brain switches off and rests. The brain is a creature that lives in us. I know that’s not biologically correct, but I find it interesting to think like that. And sleeping is always agreeable. Sometimes it isn’t, because of nightmares, but far more often it is, because if that weren’t the case we’d probably have great resistance to abandoning ourselves to a state in which our consciousness is switched off, and we’re closest to death. If dying was the same as falling asleep, perhaps people would be nicer to each other and there would be fewer problems in our lives. Because life could be good and simple if people didn’t complicate it for each other. And the number of heart attacks and strokes would diminish . . .”
We spend a lot of time remembering the past, that’s how we check how much of everything we’ve forgotten. We keep making lists, remembering important books, songs, or films. “I remember that, before New Year’s, we went to a little cinema to see Pride and Prejudice. It was sunny when we went in, and when we came out it was snowing!” I remember that snow as well.
Some ten years have passed since then.
We have plenty of time, so that every day we revive our memories of the same events. And there always comes a moment when she asks: “Tell me which of our acquaintances has died.” I don’t like that question, because I know how upsetting my answers will be, many of those closest to us have died in recent years. Every day I alter my replies, so as to make them less stressful, but that doesn’t help much. Over and over again, with the same intensity, she hears the news of the same death. I’m afraid that this multiplication of events, like the reflections of the human body in two mirrors placed opposite each other, will be completely devastating for her. Every day, as though for the first time, she learns the news of the death of other people. I thought of stopping mentioning the dead. But if I start concealing the past, she won’t forgive me when she does eventually remember everything. And I believe that she will emerge from her forgetfulness, as one emerges from a dark cinema into the light of a lively city street.
“We’ve both had attacks,” she says. “Harun is a child with attacked parents.”
On Saturday, we were at the swimming pool, lying on recliners and blinking in the shade of a small tree. When the wind bends the branches, they come close to our faces. We look up into the canopy with its small green leaves, the sun at times flashing through them. We lie there. The leaves rustle, the water murmurs. And then she says: “I’ve always liked looking at the sun through branches like this. When I was in nursery school, there were acacia trees in the garden. Now it’s as though I was in fact looking through the leaves of those acacias. What’s this tree called?”