Free The Remains of Love by Zeruya Shalev Page A

her, giving itself into her hands. It’s forbidden to start on this, she knows, but still she goes ahead and devotes herself to this dangerous game of hers, as when she was a child, lying on her bed in the children’s house and imagining the life awaiting her, the future that would set her apart from the kids all around her, who didn’t read books, weren’t as gifted academically as she was, but now this turns into torture, to go back and imagine with such precision what could have happened and didn’t happen, and her fault alone. Here she is, sitting with Orly and Emmanuel in the university cafeteria as almost every evening, keeping their secret faithfully; it doesn’t even occur to Emmanuel that she knows and on the face of it he loves and admires the pair of them in equal measure, his two teaching assistants, his star pupils. He’s comfortable sitting between them, mocking the students who pass by them with reverent expressions on their faces, inventing nicknames for them and imitating their halting speech, his eyes twinkling wickedly under the silver quiff, and as she’s choking with laughter a morsel of sandwich sprays from her mouth on to the collar of his nicely ironed shirt, and he reassures her, it doesn’t matter, we’re like a family here, and Orly grins, Dina doesn’t know what a family is, she grew up on a kibbutz, and Emmanuel says, there isn’t anyone among us who doesn’t know, everyone learns at his own pace.
    He was then exactly her age now, Professor David Emmanuel, eminent historian, did he too realise it was too late? Or did he still not understand anything, since from his point of view all of this could have carried on if she had not curtailed their future with one sentence, three futures that were closely intertwined; she bit the hand that caressed when for a moment it stopped caressing. That evening too they were sitting there after a day of teaching, as a violent rainstorm lashed the city, threatening to drill holes in asphalt roads and stone roofs. At once she sensed that something wasn’t as it had been the day before yesterday, since Emmanuel was pale, running a cold and blowing his nose incessantly, turning the end of it red, and Orly was quieter than usual and refusing to eat, and no wonder, after all she knew what he was going to say. Alas, girls, he sighed, you wouldn’t want to be in my shoes just now, and when they looked at him quizzically he wiped his nose again and coughed. I’ve been given an impossible task, he said, I have to choose one of you, our team is shrinking, only one of you can have tenure here for the coming year.
    Why was he looking only at her, why was Orly looking down? The din of the torrential rain was deafening. I’ve chosen Orly, he said in a cracked voice, I’m sorry, Dina, I think she is more suitable, but I’m sure that within a few years there will be a vacancy here for you as well, and she stared at them, stunned, while Orly’s eyes sent her a desperate appeal, don’t reveal the secret that I told only to you, but the resentment wrapped around her throat, the resentment of the less-loved daughter. It isn’t fair, Emmanuel, she mumbled, I know you.
    Did she say, I know you are lovers, I know you are having an affair, or did she perhaps say, I know she’s your mistress, seizing the opportunity to offend her too. It wasn’t fair, nothing about this was fair, and that was all she knew for certain when she fled and ran to the bus-stop, and there she encountered the dean of the faculty, who greeted her with a smiling face. I read the article you published about the holy child of La Guardia, he said, a brilliant piece of research, I very much hope you will settle in with us here, you have so much to contribute, and she muttered, that’s what I was hoping too, until this evening, and she boarded the bus in a hurry, she’d already said too much, but he pursued her and finally sat down beside her, asking her to explain why her hopes had been